You Built What?

I've had a couple of people ask me why I chose the name I Built that for this blog.  It comes from an old joke that Amanda told me when we first met.  It goes like this.

A man is backpacking through Ireland.  He walks into a small town and decides to have a drink and rest his feet for a bit.  He goes into a bar and orders a whiskey.  As he is sipping his drink the bartender leans over and asks him "Hey did you walk into town on the that little brick road?".  The backpacker replies "Yes, I did".  The bartender says "I built that road. But do they call me Shannon the road builder? No."  Then the bartender asks the backpacker "did you walk across the stone bridge on your way into town?" "Yes I did" the backpacker says. The bartender then says "I built that bridge.  But do they call me Shannon the bridge builder? No."  Then the bartender asks the backpacker "did you see the big stone house next to the bar? I built that house but do they call me shannon the housebuilder? No. But you fuck one sheep..."

Ever since then it has been a running joke between us. "I built that" can apply to a variety of things.  Such as a particularly stinky fart, getting an A on a paper or making dinner.  But more often then not it applies to a handmade item that we are particularly proud of.  I wanted that to be the theme of this blog, something that I was proud of.  So far so good.

One thing that I am particularly proud of is this cowl.  It's the first thing I've ever sold.  It's made especially for a very special friend who lives in the very cold place of DC.

It has two of the first buttons I made.

Here are the other 4 in the set that I will be putting up on Etsy sometime this week.

These buttons are made from pieces of broken china that have had the Dremel taken to them to soften the edges a bit.  I'm hoping because these are"upcycled" and thats all the rage these days people will want to pay exorbitant amounts of money for these things.  But really, I think these buttons are awesome and would look great on some convertible mittens.

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Phonebook Origami

It seems like we get the phonebook every two months at my house.  For something so outdated why in the world am I receiving one all the time?  I never know what to do with the thing.  I'm sure as hell not going to look up a phone number in it when it would take me less time to look up 6 phone numbers on the internet. I just received another phonebook on my front porch and felt like I had to do something other than recycle it.

Day 8.  Take an old book and transform it into something new.  

How convenient that I received yet another phonebook on the same day.  So I did something I've never tried before.  Origami.  Folding paper should be pretty easy right?  If you will remember my last experience with paper didn't go very well so I was determined to make something remotely interesting this time.

My first try was this little paper box.  You can't open it once it's closed so I have no idea why anyone would actually make this box.

Because the phone book pages aren't square I cut each sheet into a 6 x 6 square and followed these instructions.

6 of these later and I started to get the hang of it.

Somehow they fit together like this, don't ask me how because I can't tell you.

Finished product!

I made some other cool stuff too.  Like this ninja star. 

This was of course after I had finished slicing up some bitches tryna steal my man.

So what have we learned today folks? The next time you receive this devastatingly huge waste of paper on your doorstep make something else completely useless out of it.  At least it will be cuter than a phonebook.

Also opt out of getting your phonebook completely and then you won't have a million tiny paper boxes floating around your house and you can save a tree or two.  If that's what you're in to.

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Mr. Busy

As a kid I probably spent a little too much time reading.  I can remember one of the first book series I actually read was BOB books.  Pretty typical "learn to read" stuff.  My world was turned around when someone got me a set of Mr. Men books.  These books are still hilarious to me.  Reading Mr. Rude, who has a French accent I might add, gets me rolling every time.

Lately I have been seeing lots of lame printed tee's with Mr. Grumpy or Little Miss Perfect on them.  There is nothing lamer than t shirts with things screen printed on them, yet it seems everyone loves these things.  I'm talking about the camouflage ones with the phrase "Hah! You Can't See Me Now!" on them.  Or a 4 year old wearing a pink t shirt that says "I <3 My BFF!!"  Somehow a whole generation of people have become so lazy that expressing themselves with their clothing style is out of the question.  Now we just print "clever" statements on t shirts and consider it self expression. Whatever happened to painting your finger nails black and putting on too much eyeliner?

Which brings me to today's project.  The prompt read: make a stencil and use it in your work today.  Having never made a stencil, seeing that I am neither an anarchist or a seventeen year old boy, this was all new to me and took quite a great deal of internet perusing.

Here are all the supplies that I used in the process.

An exacto knife, some plastic dividers and spray paint.

I found a new photo editing software, gimp.  It has features similar to Photoshop and it's free!  I used it to up the contrast on this image and make it black and white.
 From this:
 to this: 


After spending way too long doing that, I printed it out and stapled it on to a plastic divider.  I used an exacto knife to cut out the outline. It took me two times to get it right because I got a little knife happy.  It's harder than it looks! Those anarchist kids have some steady hands.

When I finally got it right it looked like this.

I tried it out on a piece of cardboard before abusing the sidewalks of Glenwood.

He is so busy.

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Cabbage, cabbage and more cabbage

I never ate cabbage until I became a poor college student. Now it's cabbage all the time.  Green cabbage, red cabbage- we've got cabbage coming out of our ears over here. Particularly in the winter time. Potatoes, carrots, cabbage and squash get old after a few months of the same old recipes so it's time to try out something new.

Fortunately for me Day 6's prompt was: Use the first fruit or vegetable you find to work with.
So obviously, I made sure cabbage was the first thing I saw when I walked in the kitchen. I will do anything to get rid of all this cabbage. Except buy less. Every week I go to the Downtown Farm Market and every week I return with another head of cabbage. I secretly enjoy forcing Amanda to eat all kind of weird cabbage creations, I believe cabbage burritos were on the menu once.

So it was time for a new recipe. I picked a soup since the weather has been so cold and our house hasn't been warmer than 55 degrees since November. The Post Punk Kitchen has never let me down before, they have all kinds of yummy vegan recipes with ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen.  For this recipe, Chickpea Rice Soup with Cabbage I had all the ingredients just laying in my pantry.  Except for fresh dill.  It's the middle of winter folks, dried will do just fine.

After getting off work I was ravenous and waiting for the carrots to get soft was torture.  The kitchen was so cold the boiling soup looked like it was putting off smoke, not just steam.

 About an hour later, prep time included, it was dinner time.

 15 minutes later we were two very happy, warm girls with full bellies, not to mention with a little less cabbage in the refrigerator.  All in all a successful evening I would say.

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Sugar for Breakfast

So I have been sick the past week and therefore a very bad blogger. The only thing that I have built this week is a very high fever.  But before I caught the plague I was quite a busy beaver.  Day 5's prompt was to make something out of a collection that you have lying around your house.  I try to make it a point to not keep a bunch of stuff around, unless it's crafting supplies.  Somehow the craft table in my dining room has slowly grown outward and consumed my entire dining room. We have bins upon bins of yarn, unspun wool and completely unprocessed fleeces but I figured branching out and using something other than fiber wouldn't kill me.

Although jellybeans are not something I really collect, they're more like something I just happened to have a lot of, and I used them to make a very yummy creation.  I find nothing more satisfying than taking a handful of jellybeans and sorting them into piles and making flavor combinations.  It's like cooking dessert but a lot faster.  Every year I get one of those gigantic containers that has every flavor imaginable, although not boogers I was disappointed to find.  After eating countless juicy pears (which is by far the best flavor) I apparently still had food on my brain and made this delicious breakfast of a fried egg, banana and fresh, crusty toast with butter.

Here you can see the vast sea of jellybeans from which I had to choose from.

Unfortunately making this meant that I had to touch every single one of the jelly beans.  This is very unfortunate for anyone else who wants any jellybeans in my house.

I also finished another present for one of my Facebook friends.

This is a needle felted flower with a bendable stem for my friend Katherine.  She has known me since I was but a wee crafter making lots of terrible pot holders and paintings for the refrigerator.  I hope that this doesn't end up in the same drawer.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm dying for some comments over here folks.  In an effort to blackmail people into commenting on my blog I've decided that the first person to comment on this post will get a VERY special handmade treat from me. Don't be shy ya'll.

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People Who Can't Drive

Normally people who can't drive are the source of much aggravation for me.  If you have ever driven with me you know how serious my case of road rage is.  Hell, if you have ever ridden a bike with me you know how easy it is for me to lose my temper with cars.  But that's a story for another post.

The prompt for today: Take a 5 minute walk and use something you find while walking to inspire your creation.  So I walked to school, something I normally don't do simply because it takes too long.  Walking to class takes around 15 minutes and riding my bike takes roughly 2, not to mention the view on Lee Street isn't exactly the best.  That is if you prefer not to see the homeless man with the cart's ass. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever walked down Lee St.

I found an imprint some asshole left when they drove on to the sidewalk.  Normally this would infuriate me, probably a little too much if I'm being honest.  I found it at the intersection of Aycock and Spring Garden, prime territory for college boys with too much testosterone to drive their gas guzzling SUVs.

It inspired this knit swatch:

I only used knits and purls to establish this pattern. Having never designed my own swatch before, this was actually quite a challenge for me.  To help me visualize what the swatch would look like when it was complete  I used this program.  It's a design your own chart program that was really easy to use and let me save the chart when I was finished - something I noticed other websites didn't allow me to do. 

I'm pretty please with how it turned out.  Not that it's a pattern I'll actually ever use, that is of course unless someone asks me for a sweater that looks like it's been driven on.  Until that day (which would be a really weird day) it will be the first swatch I ever knit without a pattern.

So here's to you asshole that drove on the sidewalk.  Thanks for inspiring my project today and I hope you didn't kill anyone when you were sliding around Greensboro in your overly sized vehicle.

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Winter Colors

In North Carolina autumn is beautiful. There is no doubting it. People make a yearly pilgrimage to the mountains just to see the leaves change and breath the air that is never as crisp as it is during the fall.  Unfortunately, it's not autumn anymore.  All the leaves have fallen off and the world is a dreary smear of brown and grey.  That is until it snows. Then the world is beautiful for the fifteen minutes before the snow plow rolls through and turns the snow black.

Which brings me to my point.  I need some color in the middle of the winter.  I also need my neck to be warm and look really fucking cute, so I knit this lovely cowl. Made of bulky weight wool and hand dyed, I'm extremely pleased with the kelly green against my pasty white skin.

Chunky cowls are totally hip right now. Hipsters everywhere are crashing their fixed gear bicycles because they are unable to see over their huge cowls that were knit with size 22 needles and bulky yarn. Thankfully, I will be able to see over this cowl and will only crash my bike because of less hip reasons.  Like my pants being too tight to get my leg over the handlebars to do this. What a tragedy.

The pattern is called braidheart which is funny enough to make we want to knit it simply for the name.  It's really just a short scarf with some buttons.  Why didn't I think of that?

The buttons were made by my lovely Amanda using pieces of broken china.  Upcycled to the max, adorable and soon to be available on her Etsy, they're a huge pain in the ass to make and release god knows what kind of carcinogen dust into the air.

They are definitely worth it.

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