fear of failure

i am definitely feeling better today. my throat is still sore, and i'm coughing a lot, but i'm much less brain dead. for example, had i attempted to type "brain dead" yesterday it would have come out as "bread". nothing i tried to write made any sense unless re-read and revised 3-4 times. good thing i had no work emergencies and was able to spend my day reading and half-watching daytime television while crocheting a very fat sheep.

the photo above is of the materials i've picked out for my first sewn (not crocheted) animal. it is entirely likely that you will never see said animal because it might wind up a sad, botched creation. but i love the fabrics i've chosen: camel and cream cotton velvets, a pink cotton chambrey, and violet linen. i've sat on a tall stack of fabric afraid of the sewing machine for too long... wish me luck.

update: still brain dead. just cut open the tip of my index finger with the rotary cutter thingy. my first attempt at sewing an animal has been cut short. ha. that pun was not intended. wish me a lot more luck than i clearly thought i needed.

sick day

jasper the lion

i am sick. i have a sore throat and what feels like a heavy weight on my chest. it could be worse and that's why i've decided to spend the day reading in bed, hoping that no one will need anything from me. last night i finished my first lion while watching american idol and hells kitchen. i had been sitting on this ball of gold and orange hand dyed icelandic wool for over a year, unsure what to do with it and convinced it would never be used. i had to learn a new stitch for the mane and tufted tail and am really happy with how he turned out. there's something very '70s scandinavian about him, don't you think?

back to bed with me. i'm reading the other boleyn girl. i always feel like a loser reading books that have been turned into movies after the movies have come out. it makes me feel like i'm the lowest common denominator. i'm so glad i read atonement and the time traveler's wife before they were optioned.

ps. can you believe that guy's food made gordon ramsey vomit? i don't think it was for dramatic effect either, because just the thought of having venison, raw quail egg, capers, white chocolate, caviar, and scallops in my mouth simultaneously is enough to give me the mouth sweats, too.

pss. remember how when E! and entertainment tonight and all those shows first started talking about the other boleyn girl they pronounced it "boleen"? how dumb was that?

busy busy busy

what a busy month it's been... so, so busy! but busy good and busy exciting. the most exciting thing is that i'm almost finished the new cat power site. that's right, i'm designing the new cat power site! i also got to do the banner ads. fancy! the best thing about the new cat power site is the over-the-top use of animated gifs. that's right, the new cat power site is covered in animated gifs. i'll bet you can't wait to see it now!

over the holidays i made some little springtime bunnies and i just added them to my etsy shop. i'm getting ready to get packed up for another trip to my family's place on vancouver island and i figured i'd better get these bunnies up in the shop before i leave. my mum says there are sea otters all over the place lately and that one even dragged a flounder or sole onto the lawn where it tore the thing apart and hissed at onlookers. i really, really hope i see an otter!

what else... it was my birthday yesterday! i had some really great dinners out with friends and family over the weekend. i got the most unbelievably beautiful, over the top decadent french copper mixing bowl from hans' family. i love, love it and would never have splurged on one for myself. my sort of sister in law remembered me saying exactly that when we were at the gourmet warehouse together over the summer. she's the best, right? this bowl is begging for meringue.

more homemade for the holidays

a butterfly for my sister, originally uploaded by squirrel_of_snooze.
the past two days have been spent frantically baking, wrapping, organizing, cleaning, running errands... it's been busy! i'm sure it's like that for everyone, and i'm sure everyone is wondering when the holiday part of this season will actually begin!

this is a little watercolour mounted butterfly i made for my little sister for christmas. i'm going to wrap it right now, but thought i'd take a photo first! she's 13 so she generally hates everything, so keep your fingers crossed that she hates this less than most things. and keep your fingers crossed that she doesn't know i have a blog, too okay?!

i got the most beautiful painting in the mail today from hadley hutton and i will take a photo of it when i get home and have decided where to hang it. now i'm off to do laundry, wrap some more, and pull my hair out. in that order.

here's what i baked yesterday:

clockwise from top left: les punitions / pine nut rosemary shortbread / chocolate shortbread with cocoa nibs and sea salt / buckwheat butter cookies with cocoa nibs / true spice cookies / world peace cookies

the spice cookies and the world peace cookies are my absolute favourites and i'll definitely make them again next year. and those little puniments, the punitions sablé, are the perfect simple cookie. i baked apricot-pistachio bars over the weekend too, and just pulled them out of the freezer.

doh! tannenbaum

i left to visit my family for a few days on thursday morning, and so hans thought it would be nice to spend wednesday evening together decorating a tree. we'd agreed to get a small tree this year for many reasons, but i was still looking forward to going to pick out a nice noble fir together. hans decided to surprise me with a potted tree - a spruce! first off, i'm allergic to spruce. and then that it's potted...

i haven't gotten gift tags yet, please excuse the neon post-its!
1. our little tree / 2. tree close up / 3. alpaca soft trees / 4. pine gnomes

in my experience, potted trees kind of... die. they never really seem to recover from being ripped out of the ground and stuck in a pot, nevermind the trauma of spending a good fortnight in a warm, dry home covered in decorations. even if the tree makes it through its life indoors it then has to sit outside in a pot until the ground thaws enough so we can dig it a hole. poor little potted tree... hans of course said "poor potted tree? at least it's still alive. you think the one we'd have cut down would have had it better?" good thing trees aren't cognoscente.

so anyway, i am allergic to spruce. this was a problem in my dendrology classes at university where i was often laughed at while i'd sniffle and itch my way through tree identification labs. poor hans, how was he to know? needless to say, we did not spend wednesday night decorating said tree. what a bitch i am!

i went away for the weekend and made some crochet soft trees, and whittled myself some pine gnomes (not allergic to pine) pictured above and inspired by a swedish blog, but which i can't remember. then yesterday morning i broke down and tried to put lights on our little tree. the sad little thing couldn't support the weight of them though, but by the time i finally accepted our tree would have no lights i was covered from elbows to wrists in hives. i called my mum: "I HATE THIS TREE!" she was unsympathetic. they got a noble fir.

so no lights, no twinkle... why had hans gotten us this tree? he knows that i'm a control freak. i added the red wooden beaded garland, and the tinfoil chains a brother and i made years ago while spending christmas in york. i then discovered that 90% of our ornaments were too large and/or heavy for this sad little, hyper allergenic tree to support. i added some of the smallest vintage kugels we have, along with the eggs i bought at a market in prague a few years ago. but it was lacking, and the angel i'd purchased at an oxfam store in york looked ridiculous as a topper. don't even get me started on the god awful, black plastic pot this thing came in...

i used some left over cotton cinched with red rickrack to pretty up the pot, but it was still lacking. then i remembered how pretty i thought a tree i'd seen in domino looked and i knew exactly what to do. i used the turquoise satin ribbon i'd intended for gift wrapping to save our little, spindly, hive-inducing, lightless tree. and now i can't stop looking at it. it's still a bit of a "pathetic" charlie brown tree but i love it anyway.

it's so easy to get into the habit of picking out the same tree, and decorating it with the same ornaments year in and year out. it took a tree that had me yelling "I HATE IT! I HATE IT!" to break me out of that nostalgic comfort zone, and now that the rashy hives have gone i can honestly say that i love this awful little tree. so in the end everything worked out, but we will never again have a spruce in our home.

arctic front meet pineapple express

alba and lavender

this past weekend it snowed and snowed, and since we still haven't managed to have our snow tires put on i stayed in. i ventured out on saturday afternoon to drag the dog around the park. she's not a fan of the cold, and i actually had to get behind her and shove her along for part of the walk. there were footprints everywhere, but my favourite tracks were the ones left by the long haired miniature dachshunds: two sets of two paws followed by a dash left where their little tails drag behind as they hop along. dachshund tracks look like morse code in the snow.


lavender

the rest of the weekend was spent stitching and stuffing. i finished this little rabbit as part of a swap with hadley hutton. she's stuffed with soft roving and is made of merino, and hand dyed icelandic wool. i spun lavender and cream yarns together to create the mottled detailing on her smock.

it seems like hadley's been adding new work to her etsy shop everyday lately, and i love, love, love the spotted owls below:


new pieces from hadley hutton:
spotted owl // two blue // butterfly, did you take my spots, asked little bird

i also finished a camel for my mum over the snowy weekend. she collects camels. she collects a lot of things actually: baskets, kohl pots, opium pots, shadow puppets... mostly though, she collects camels. this one is made of super soft alpaca, and its little ruff collar is beaded. i'm thinking about adding little white or red french knots to make it look like a christmas wreath, but i'm still mulling over that one...


christmas camel

so i pretty well spent the entire weekend making stuff and staring out the window. i think that birds are always great to watch in the snow. there were a couple dozen crows on the railroad tracks pecking at things they found the the snow. i wonder if grain, jarred loose by the trains breaking and shunting, falls from the freight cars.

and then there were the pigeons, which took to the sky flying in formation like schools of fish every time the snow stopped.


pigeon flight


pigeon flight

i am randomly closing this post with the video to a terence trent d'arby song i was briefly obsessed with as a child, before i moved on to the more important task of memorizing every word of paul simon's rhythm of the saints. please note the shoulder pads, and wicked dance moves.

snowy mountains, mushrooms and mistletoe

good morning snowy mountains
one of the best things about vancouver in november is waking up to that morning when the snow line reaches the north shore mountains. the first week or so it melts by noon, but eventually it sticks and that's when it's really winter. people always point to the northwest and say "how can you live with all the rain in the winter? isn't it depressing? i think i'd kill myself." to which i reply "but we have colour, and you have grey and brown, dirty snow and trees covered in burlap." some people get seasonal affective disorder from short winter days. i have seasonal aesthetic disorder. in vancouver the snow's rarely around long enough to get dirty, and the snow that sticks stays up in the mountains where it belongs. everything's green and blue and crisp and clean and shiny. i have the added bonus of all the red of my view across the port. it's very christmassy don't you think? that said, it rained all weekend and i was a shut-in. a very productive shut-in, but a shut in nonetheless. here's what i did:


mushrooms and mistletoe
the past week has been an assembly line of holiday ornaments for the swap, (and gifts for family). i originally wanted to do bunnies because i love bunnies, and to top that off design sponge recently declared that rabbits are the new birds. i told a friend of mine about that and she said that's totally wrong, because mushrooms are the new birds. first i made the wool crochet mushrooms, then i felted some white berries, and then i made crochet alpaca leaves which were embroidered and beaded. and THEN i embroidered and beaded the mushroom tops and used a candy cane striped bamboo blended string to tie it all together. it's a lot of work, and i have a lot more to do.

holiday ornament swap, group 4

holiday ornament swap, group 4:
1. swap packs by nicole, freshly blended / 2. brown flowers by jennifer, swallowfield / 3. elizabeth dye
4. mattie le oobee by leslie, onegirl designwrks / 5. wood walnut evergreen tree from janet, three potato four
6. dachshund combat by caitlin keegan / 7. jessica williams / 8. shoulder bag by emma, showpony / 9. ulrika nilsson

during last week's holiday ornament swap sign up leslie and i decided to make an extra ornament to send to each other. what are the odds that of the 600+ taking part in the swap, we'd wind up in the same group? pretty slim, but it happened. when i got the list of people in my swap group i did a little dance. they'll be glad to know that i've almost figured out what to make them.

i read the news today, oh boy

toys that won't send your children to hospital:
1. squirrel pull toy by matsutaki / 2. elephant by tiny warbler / 3. peony le oobee by one girl
4. choco bunny by girl savage / 5. polly by hop skip jump / 6. felt play food by katie made goods
7. kokeshi doll by run amok / 8. alba the bunny by squirrel of snooze / 9. perry the penguin by cynic the lamb

i leave CBC newsworld on in the background while i work, and the headlines today have been fantastic. first off, that tetrapod girl survived having her parasitic vestigial twin limbs removed after a surgery that took a full day less than anticipated. when i'd first heard about the story i couldn't imagine putting my child through a 48 hour surgery that had a 75% chance of mortality. can you imagine being born with 8 limbs in india of all places? her neighbouring villagers actually believed she was the reincarnated deity of wealth, but strangely were still hoping to sell her to the circus. hopefully this little girl will have a chance at a normal life now. isn't it amazing what modern medicine is capable of?

next up, the canadian dollar hit $1.10 USD today. that's nuts! should i believe the projections that it will go as high as $1.25 and get my paypal money out while i can, or should i leave it in hock until it eventually comes back down? i might have to wait until bush leaves the white house for that to happen. what a drag!

but the real story that blew me away is just one more compelling reason to buy handmade this christmas. i didn't think it would be possible to trump leaded paint in toys, but china managed to do it! aqua dots (or bindeez in australia) have been pulled off the market after being found to contain GHB. that's right, china is trying to date rape the children of the world. so this holiday season, buy handmade, because when you buy from a crafter you get linen and merino, not heavy metals and hallucinogens.

the holiday craft disaster that is soon to be my living room

lily the pug, originally uploaded by squirrel_of_snooze.

i finished my first custom order this morning, and i think it might be the best thing i've done! when i was asked if i'd be able to do a pug, i knew what i wanted it to look like but wasn't sure that i'd be able to make it exactly how i was imagining it. i picked out some very puggy colours in very soft merino wool, and it turned out even better than i'd hoped! i think there are more pugs and bostons and frenchies in my future...

the next few weeks are going to be busy! yesterday morning i signed up for the holiday ornament swap organized by freshly blended and cake and pie. i just missed the sign up last year and have been looking forward to this ever since seeing the beautiful, amazing, and original decorations everyone made. i rarely get things in the mail so this is something i'm really excited about! take a look at some of the ornaments made for last years swap and you'll see why. now i just need to figure out what i should make...



from top left:
1. liquid paper - home sweet home / 2. emikw - felt ornaments / 3. gasup the zamboni - swaptopus
4. emiee - a pack of monkeys / 5. creative kismet - little birds / 6. fluff life - robin nests / 7. sara - hannah the hen
8. lula louise - hanging strawberry ornament / 9. chat du rouge - pinkville / 10. yukimo - crochet bobbles
11. sarah van wijck - trees / 12. jenn knits a lot - penguins

i also finally pledged to buy (or make) handmade this christmas at buyhandmade.org. it was something i'd been meaning to do the past couple of weeks, but i just have a problem filling out forms and coming up with quotes. what was i supposed to say? "i can't wait!" or "this year it's all handmade for me!" attempts at witty quotes aside, i am looking forward to it, though this means poor hans will have to live with a messy apartment the next few weeks with yarn and batting and god knows what else all over the place. now that i've made it sound so great, would you care to join me? or perhaps you'd like avoid the mess and work in favour of buying something of the crochet persuasion?

fountains, gowns and ships are here...

i sold my first kitten through my etsy shop last week. yay! thank you carrie for ordering clover and i hope you've found a good spot for her in your home! my first sale gave me a good excuse to make another little kitten to fill the spot on my shelf left empty once i sent clover packing. this is francesca and she's a leggy kitten, standing a good inch taller than the others i've made. she's super soft, and i'm really enjoying working with these muted colours. i think it's because it's so grey outside these days that all i want is soup and a crochet hook.


special needs - "francesca"

over the summer i oooooh-ed and ahhhhh-ed over abigail glassenberg's softies. while her two daughters are napping she makes the most amazing creatures. she makes toys and works of art in those 2 hours a day she has to herself, and they are all so whimsical and original and inspiring. i have posted a bunch about birds lately, and here i go again.



abigail has a few pieces available through her etsy shop right now, and is preparing a number of others for some upcoming shows. you can see them all by visiting her flickr page, and you can read all about them by visiting her blog, while she naps.

this past year everyone has gone to the birds. almost 2 years ago now i started work on album art for a boompa artist named lullaby baxter. she did a really cool photo shoot with taxidermy birds -- whiskyjacks to be exact, which are among my top 5 favourite birds, so i was understandably anxious to get to work on them. i begged, pleaded, connived, argued and prayed to use a certain bird photo for the cover, but lullaby was not having it. there was no way she was going to let me put this bird on the cover. she wanted it to be text only. then why taunt me with such a great photo? i lost the battle. a chronic personality flaw of mine means that i still think i am right, an affliction compounded by how prevalent birds have been ever since that album came out. here are the 2 covers, and regardless of getting my way or not, it's still a beautiful record so here's a song you might like, too. and if you do like it you can visit lullabybaxter.com to stream the entire album.




lullaby baxter - "rattled little clam" from garden cities of to-morrow