Things and stuff.

What have I been up to since my last post?

Well... I've been crocheting again, and I have a new crochet book. It's Tiny Yarn Animals, by Tamie Snow who is the brains behind Roxycraft which is a website anyone who's into crochet will no doubt recognise. I hoard amigurumi books but seldom actually follow the patterns because I find most of them too big, and I really prefer tiny little toys. Tamie's book, as the name suggests, is full of patterns for tiny little animals and they are all cute enough that I actually want to make them. I made this hippo for today's Thing-a-day. He's from a pattern in the book but of course I abandoned the pattern and did my own thing after a while. My husband named him Gregory - why I have no idea, but I think it suits him. I also learned how to do an invisible decrease from PlanetJune today - it's absolutely shocking to think that I've been crocheting for this long, and I own so many crochet books that no doubt give instructions for this, and I never knew it existed till now. And it makes a huge difference.

What else? Well yesterday was Valentine's Day, but my husband is a very vocal hater of the greeting card industry. So instead of buying him a card I drew him a picture. I should explain that he's a big Resident Evil fan, and also happens to work for a very well-known videogames company who make a certain zombie-filled game. And he is definitely better than zombies (although I do like zombies too).

He did get me a card though - the first year I've one that said "wife"!



Instead of going out and paying over the odds for a meal in a packed restaurant, we spend the day in the V&A, which is one of my favourite places. And I did an EDM challenge when I was there, which was #38 - draw in a museum. Unfortunately it didn't turn out as I wanted. It was very busy and people kept walking in front of me and blocking my view, and eventually I got annoyed, scribbled a few very rough details, and left in a sulk. This is a bust of Charles II and I'm posting a photo of the original beside it - can you tell the difference?

My second life drawing class was on Friday and it was as enjoyable as the first one. We moved on to using different 3D shapes to represent different body parts - cylinders, spheres, cones etc. My drawings are still not looking all that much like actual people! It was very very difficult to get half decent photos of my drawings, due to the lack of light in this apartment. I ended up having to put them on the floor and rig up a tripod (my husband's awesome Manfrotto that I wish was mine) so it was kind of kneeling over the paper, then using the brightest lamp we have as sidelighting and using a remote release to get a long exposure although I think I ended up using flash after all. And the photos are still absolutely terrible even after some photoshopping! There must be an easier way!


One thing I am happy about is that having upgraded to Photoshop CS4, I can finally shoot in Raw, which is making me want to go out and photograph everything.

Finally, the socks are done! Not only that but I've actually worn them out and they haven't fallen apart, and are so comfy that ordinary socks now feel rubbish. I've started another pair for my husband in some lovely blue yarn.