Gleefully stolen from scribe_ari! Addictium: (ah-dik-tee-umm) Noun, 1. A Substance mixed with cool projects to make craftspeople want to do them lots. Manifests in the form of instant to near instant gratification in project creation and completion.

It has been a rough weekend on my hands...

All weekend long, and most of the next week I'll wager, I've been cutting and sewing and embroidering like a mad woman.

Saturday, I was picking up some last minute shower supplies when the wind caught the door and slammed it on my right hand. Then, later on, I accidentally grabbed the edge of the grill lid instead of the handle with my left hand. Ugh. Dual owies. Luckily, neither seemed to impart permanent damage beyond a few scrapes (right) and a shiny spot of just-melted skin (left). *sigh* Clumsy girl.

Today, I had more pleasant things in my hands -



Currants! Tart and nummy! I never see them for sale and love them SO much, so I finally broke down and planted some. I just planted the currant bushes this June, but one of them decided to put forth a little mini crop. I scarfed down a few yesterday, but otherwise, this is the full yield for this batch. Apparently there is usually a fall crop, so perhaps I'll get more in a few months and perhaps a few of the other plants will produce by then as well.

The rest of the week my hands will be busy too... Monday and Tuesday will be sewing like a crazed maniac, working on my class handouts, and packing. Wednesday will be fighters practice. Hopefully, Thursday will be the last bits of packing and early to bed to hit the road early on Friday!

( To Do List )

It is definitely getting to be spring, and that can only mean one thing... it's dyeing time!

I have some commissions I really need to get off my plate, but after that, I have a few experiments that I would like to run, not the least of which is with woad. I will be ordering some woad from abroad in the next few days. If you would like some, please let me know and I will add your order to mine to save on the shipping. I'm going to get some woad balls (semi-processed woad leaves) from one company - they seem to be about $8 for about 100 grams. I am also going to order some woad powder (more completely processed) from another provider at $15 for 25 grams (they also have 10 gram packs for $8). I also may be ordering some weld (500grams for about $15) and madder extract ($9 for 25 grams). I'm not sure what the shipping will be, but I suspect it won't be too bad - it's coming from overseas, but they should be small packages.

If anyone is interested, please let me know by noon on Wednesday so I can place the order.

Oh! And for those of you wishing you had Jenny Dean's Wild Color, this is not an adequate substitute, but it is a lot of fun to see what she's up to these days and she does seem to give new recipes pretty regularly!   http://www.jennydean.co.uk/wordpress/

Ugh. Lovely night tonight, right up until the part where I was congratulating myself on finishing up #7 for my April Thing-a-Day and was thinking about posting them. Then, I put down the woodburner, which immediately rolled off the table and onto the floor. Oh, but not onto the tile or carpet, that would have been too simple! On to the neck pillow over-filled with tiny styrofoam beads! Which promptly burst and spewed little foam beads everywhere. >:/

So - pillow with depleted stuffing and a hard-edged hole where the cover melted, a woodburner ruined by being covered in melted dinosaur by-product, and a room that smells like ass. Perfect end to the night.

Serves me right for having synthetics about, I suppose. :p

The annual Thing-a-Day challenge does great things for my productivity level but at the end of February I realized I still had a pile of projects to complete. Therefore, I have decided that April will be a Thing-a-Day month too. However, I'll not be limiting it to purely crafty projects and will be including more fix-it and practical things too. I'll also only be posting the projects once a week or so so as to be less cluttering in your friends list. 

I am also going to home *gasp* next weekend, so I am thinking about hosting a low-key project day on Saturday afternoon. I'm thinking chatting and sewing and maybe dinner out. I'll provide comfy couches, tea and light snacks. Anyone interested?

This past weekend was lovely, if exhausting.

Thursday night I stayed up entirely too late waiting for a friend to get in and consequently collapsed into bed in short order.

Friday I woke up bright and early (OK, at 11, but that is bright and early when bedtime was at 5AM) and took delivery of my new baby. I am now the proud owner of a lovely loom!



She's a four harness, six treadle, 42" wide loom from Kessenich. I'm not warping her up until next week because I have too much to do between now and this weekend, but soon, SOON, there will be the weave-y goodness!

Then there was lunch on Monty's Blue Plate Diner, some online research, and the drive down to Chicago. We went to go see a bunch of bands, primarily TYR, which was a lot of fun, if not what I am used to. After the show we sat around with various folks from the band and chatted for some time. Much of the topics were out of my ken, but geeking is good in all its glorious forms... The drive back home was loooooonnnnnnggggg, especially since we did not pull in until something like 6AM. Ooof.

Saturday afternoon, we had a number of folks planned to come over for projecty goodness. However, W and I could not make it, J got sick, dread_ex  was lazy, ysolt  and  knappenp  arrived late, and mightyjesse  arrived even later, so it was a much smaller crew than planned. As usual, I had WAY too much food, even after not making several of the dishes I had planned. :P Much projecty goodness was had but things broke up around 10:30PM or so and we headed to bed shortly thereafter, successfully making it to bed before 4AM for the first time that weekend.

Sunday we slept in, lazed about a bit, went out for brunch, and then were sitting around relaxing when my dad come in to town a bit earlier than expected. I said good-bye to my company, went out to dinner with my dad and then spent the rest of the night working on my smack-down project.

Monday was work, research, photocopying and Frosties with reneekytokorpi , and then more research until late.

Today, I worthless as I have the beginnings of a horrid cold AGAIN. >:/  I am not usually this persistently ill and it is starting to annoy me. (I know, I know, my own fault with the late nights, yadda, yadda, yadda... I'm still cranky.) Soooo much to do... sooooo little time to do it in.....

So off I go to get done what I may, although I am becoming concerned that I may not have the smack down things done in time. :/ *sigh* Here goes nuthin'

I've not posted anything of substance in awhile, so I'll indulge in a little bit of catch-up.

Last weekend was It's Only a Flesh Wound - a fight-fight-fight event here in Jara. This year, we had Duke Paul of Bellatrix come out as a guest teacher and attendance was significantly up over last year. The fighter-boys fought themselves to exhaustion while the spectators worked on projects and shivered. (Making the Viking coat of sheepy wonderfulness for this event was a Good Plan.) Afterwards, a large contingent went out to Samba, a Brazillian all-you-can-eat steakhouse. Nummy. I had several house guests for the weekend but I ended up with a few fewer than I'd planned for, so I was able to put up iarrogante as well. I love having guests under my roof and it was nice to have good friends from both six hours east and six hours west.  Having a houseful was lovely but, as usual, they didn't seem to stay nearly long enough. Granted, that was partially my fault as I knew several of them were headed out to practice early on Sunday and I was just too much inclined to be a lazy, lazy slug-a-bed. :P Still, it was pleasant to see everyone.

Sunday night, however, things took a turn for the worse and I got sick, sick, sick. :/ I think it may have been food poisoning, not an infectious illness, but it completely knocked me out on Monday and I only made it through a half day on Tuesday. Both of those days were essentially a loss, except for the little bit of geeking I did with ego_id_non_feci  and mightyjesse

Wednesday was a little better. Work was sort of rough and I only fenced for three rounds, but I made myself get on the field and had some pretty satisfying rounds. In particular, it was a joy to fence with Cosimo, who I have not had the opportunity to dance with in some time. By the end of the night, however, I was DONE. 

Sadly, I had to get up early for work on Thursday since I needed to leave early for a dental appointment. Joy. The appointment itself was pretty painless - still no cavities and the dentist was pretty pleased with the X-rays. Oddly enough, they found on one of the X-rays that part of one of my wisdom teeth is still in my gums. Huh. It's been there a decade with no problems, so I suspect I'll just leave that alone. The BAD part of the appointment was that they apparently don't do a cleaning at the initial visit, you need to make a separate appointment for that. *grumble* Luckily they had an appointment for Friday, so I took it so as to avoid a long wait or needing to take off from work again.

My big win for Thursday was string related - I went over to mightyjesse's to weave and, this time, I had success! I am so pleased that my issue really was the loose loom - I'd been worried that there was a type of string toy where I really had Teh Fail. I like string, I'm GOOD with string, I just could not understand how I suddenly managed to suck at this one particular application of string. Happily, that has been corrected - I am not a failure as a weaver! I'll have photos as the project progresses, but probably not before next weekend. As a little bit of bonus win - last night as I was working on some little projects around the house, Good Eats came on and - back to back - the topics were Vinegar and Spices. I stayed up way past my bedtime watching them and sewing. :)

I had the tooth cleaning today and that was awful. The stoopid hygienist was lecturing me about coming in more often as she repeatedly slipped and sliced open my gums. I just really wanted her to stop talking and pay more attention to what she was doing. When she finally stopped the stabbing for a moment but didn't stop with the yammering, I couldn't help replying "gee, it's so hard to imagine why someone would be less than enthusiastic about repeatedly getting stabbed in the face..." She was a little quieter after that, but still seemed a little miffed that I was NOT interested in scheduling another cleaning in six months. *shudder* Maybe it would be less bad if I went more often, but I'd rather have one heinous hour every four years than reasonably crappy hour long appointments every six months. No. Thank. You. >:(  I promptly went across the street and had myself a Butterburger, fries, and a coke... and a giant, sugary Concrete Malt. :)

Now... On to my projecting for the day! I had debated going into work today to make up for Monday, but decided I could afford the vacation day and I have a lot of projects I want to complete before next Saturday.

Oh, string... come here string... I wanna play with you...

 

I thought this might be of interest to some of you sheepy people, so I am posting the info.

Oh, and before I forget - Come join me in the 2009 Thing-a-Day challenge! The concept is simple - make something every day during February and post a short blog about it. It's a fun way to see what other people are up to and to complete some of the things that have been languishing on the to-do list. :)

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year.
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well. We all can make stuff!