crappy photo, but the sweater is still in progress:



I found the baby sweater pattern online, but cannot remember how I found it.

it's SUPER easy - I'm 75% done and have maybe put a couple of hours into sewing.

And what is up with everyone getting pregnant!?!?!?! There are four people in my small section of the office who are either having babies or their wives are having babies.

If you haven't seen this video - you should watch it right away. It's beautiful.


World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

the last few weeks have been sort of busy at the office so I haven't had much crafty time or had much brain power left after the work day to post.

I am slowly working on a baby sweater for one of other pregnant co-workers.

will post picks soon.

sorry to leave you in the lurch if you were hoping from crafty stuff :(

My friends Hurricane Jane and her husband Gerry were lucky enough to purchase a house before the big market collapse.

We bought them a bonzai tree to grow with their home. At the last minute I realized I had almost nothing to wrap with. I grabbed some wrapping paper I already had, a brown paper bag, some left over paper from my wedding announcements, some scrap book supplies, a button and got to work.

The bow is made from the brown paper bag, announcement paper, and button.

Just some random photos from the past few months...

meeting sketch - boredom ensued as I was waiting for my turn in a meeting with the QA team.


random pre-meeting sketches


love the embroidery on this skirt.


another meeting sketch


random photo I took for my loopt profile. I love this combo of hat sweater and necklace


taking down the christmas lights in Hollywood


cute thrift store fabric


funky dress with some really wild fabric

The topic for Illustration Friday this week is "Breezy"

Here is what can to my mind:

I made this necklace about 6 months ago.



watch parts, vintage button and thread.

I found out that one of my bosses is having another baby so I set about making a 12 pointed star blanket for him and his wife.

the end result:


I purchased the yarn while on my crafty adventure a few weeks ago.

apologies for the crappy picture - I had to take it really really fast before I packed it up to give to him.

a few weekends ago I got inspired to make some more jewelry. I ended up with a nice lariat necklace and a ring.

Originally I planned to make the necklace with a spool of thread in the middle, inspired by a project I saw on craftster.org.

I pulled all the original thread off the spool.



I couldn't decided if I wanted the spool to be covered with yarn or with embroidery thread.



I went with embroidery thread.



It was much too large for the thread and I could find no way to get the spool work. so came up with another solution.

I joined the 2 chains with a single small jump ring.



I then put a small silver bead over the jump ring to sort of hide it.



I then set about picking beads for the ends of the lariat. Here is what I ended up with.



I stacked the beads together on a head pin and closed the pin with a ring.



Here is the final necklace:



I then gathered some buttons a ring back and started fiddling around until I found a combo that I like. Here is the result...

Front:


Back:

this is the time of year to hate the Oscars.

Even though I work for a company that is up for a nomination, I don't watch them in protest of what happens to my neighborhood.

I live in Tourist Central - Hollywood. I expect traffic jams, people roaming about loudly caterwauling in the middle of the night, and other such nonsense but, the Oscars are another ball of wax entirely.

You cannot drive on Hollywood Blvd in half a mile in either direction from the corner of Hollywood and Highland. the subway station is closed the ENTIRE day. Metro bypasses the stop on Oscars day.

forget trying to leave your apartment that day if you live in the area, oh yeah, and expect helicopters ALL DAY AND NIGHT the weekend of the event.