Directions? What directions?

I learned something today.  I learned that I really should abide by the directions listed on a bottle of chemicals.  The whole "wear protective rubber gloves when handling product"  just didn't seem to apply to me at the time.  I mean, who has the time to disrupt their mo-jo and hunt down a pair of rubber gloves?  Not me!  Now I know that they put such words on the label specifically for the stubborn (ahem...like me).

Dear Brain In My Head,
     Next time do not allow your person to open a bottle of photo sensitizer and emulsion, taking no care to avoid it getting on your bare thumbs, lest you want to experience the burning feeling of it eating into your skin for hours afterwards.  Not smart. 

               Sincerely,
                     Self

I've never had a chemical burn before but they are surprisingly painful for their pathetic little size.  I stole a couple of my kid's Scooby Doo bandages to sport tonight.

For the record, I hate following the directions on sewing patterns too.  I'm impatient for my end result and would rather take short cuts.  No risk of chemical burns there though, so it's all good.

A dabble here, a dabble there

My youngest son with last summer's strawberries...maybe this photo will inspire some summer weather to come to Oregon! 

 
I just changed my blog name.  Why?  Because I'm a dabbler by nature.  "The Groovy Mess" seems to fit me and my life better.  Not to mention that my former blog name, "Badonkadonk Knits" was selected because I was knitting custom orders of baby attire, which I'm taking a break from for now.  I might start that up again in the near future under The Groovy Mess.

I fantasize about my "someday crafting" a lot. Someday I'd like to quit dabbling and streamline my crafting a little more.  Someday I'd like to get really good at just one.  Someday I'd even like to start a crafting business.  I mean a REAL crafting business...one that actually makes money.  I have several blogs bookmarked that I follow (or stalk?) featuring women who have done this.  Started out with a dinky little blog outlining their hobby crafting and eventually it mushroomed into something really, well, business-like.

I often think that if I could just get myself organized enough and focused enough and educated enough in certain areas, then I could do it too!   I will admit there is quite a bit of fear holding me back though.  Fear that I will embark on something and fail, I guess.  Fear of the internet and my lack of knowledge of things like how websites run and how to get my own.  Concepts like domain names, web hosts, copyrights and trademarks float around in my head at night and overwhelm me.   I find myself a bit intimidated by the thought of putting my creative juices into something and then putting it on a site like Etsy, only to have it sit there with no one thinking it is as cool as I do.  Yikes!  Maybe someday...when my young kids are both in school and I can quit spending my time fishing out those random items thrown into our toilets for good (the latest of which was a full bar of soap courtesy of our 2 year old).

In the meantime, I still dabble.  Sewing and more sewing, refashioning clothing, repurposing thrift store finds, jewelry making, knitting, wood working, a little photography (not that I'm great at it, but I like it), and my newest revisited love...screen printing (more on that in a future post for sure).  Oh, and let's not even talk about what Pinterest has done to me!  Oh the endless possibilities.  Eye candy for the crafter to be found there, folks!

Here are some of my recent favorites off of Pinterest that I'm determined to try:

Glass tile pendant tutorial

Little boy neck tie tutorial

Spring time ruffle top tutorial

Tee to tank tutorial 

Wool anyone?

I feel like it's been forever since I've posted...while my break from blogging was several months long I was busy creating fun stuff.  Of course, I photographed basically none of it and gave most of it away as gifts for the holidays, so my bad there.  My resolution for 2012?  1) Take more photos of my projects.  2)  Take more photos of my projects BEFORE giving away as gifts. 

Here are two that were given as gifts using wool...one of my favorite materials!

A tree pillow using my kid's hand prints as the branches & trunk.  The red background is from a recycled sweater found while thrifting.  I was able to get two 14x14 pillow faces out of it, plus some scraps left over for future projects.  The hand/arm print is suede leather from a women's shirt also found while thrifting.  I purchased a bunch of wool felt from Felt On The Fly which made up the leaves once I cut out a bunch of little circles and stacked them up here and there.  The cover has a zippered back for ease of removing and cleaning if need be.

And a little knitting....I like this yarn and hat pattern so much I may make myself one too!  I used Malabrigo yarn, chunky, in the Sealing Wax colorway.  Love it!  The pattern was a free one found on Ravelry but I can't for the life of me find the bookmark so I'm going to have to go do a big search for the pattern again when I have free time to devote to it. The flowers are cut from wool felt scraps left from the above pillow project and hand sewn on. I used this  tutorial for the smaller one and just winged it for the larger one, which is a pinwheel design.

Yeah for wool!

Just Peachy!

I turned this...

Into this...

All on my own! First time canning without my mom to help...so I actually had to read directions this time.

Come fly away...

I sewed up a fleece superhero cape for a friend's son after the kiddos went to bed. Love quick projects that turn out just as I envisioned!