I went to the national portrait gallery for their weekly drawing night - the focus was on drawing figures. I haven’t drawn in years, but this was lots of fun. There were insanely talented people there. Being in the museum, quietly scribbling was super relaxing. And having guidance at the start, having a look at other people’s work with little comments about what they did right made all the difference.

I’ve bought a tiny notebook I carry around, scribbling notes and drawings. I don’t know why I’ve had the urge to write stuff down recently, but I figured I’ll embrace it and see if it sticks!

But I can’t wait to get home where all my stuff is so I can start actually crafting. Like I mentioned before, I’ve been wanting to try embroidery and I have a patch idea in mind now! Will post on here once I start :)

I swear I took pics of my WIPs last week, just haven’t made my camera talk to my laptop yet, etc. Will update post with pics.

knitting

Currently making a mint green scarf, the inspiration for which was not holey but I wanted to practice yarn-overs. This thing is taking forever to make, but also does not help that I messed it up and had to start over twice. I really should put a lifeline in. There is a goof in it but since it isn’t super noticeable, it’s staying. I am about halfway finished now.

The other sort-of current knitting project that I will be working on finishing after the scarf is a white hat that I have the brim completed for. This is made with sock weight yarn and is a project that I am glad to have some progress on after having a hard time getting it started. It is currently on hold because now that I have gotten farther than I ever have with the hat, I am not sure what I want to do moving forward.

embroidery

So I started this stitch sampler thing and have discovered that I absolutely hate doing those flowers, and so have been avoiding this project because there are two more of them before I can move on to the rest of the stuff.

what else

So, your girl Dala is kind of a squirrel and starts stuff and then doesn’t finish it, maybe it didn’t come out like it was in my head or in the case of some things, are in ‘project timeout’ because they have annoyed me in some fashion, usually this is because I am trying to do something that is above my skill level, but sometimes it is because the ball of yarn turned into a giant yarn barf and I am not feeling like unraveling the knots right now. So I have all kinds of half-done things. There’s a ball of yarn on the coffee table that I started crocheting a granny square cardigan with and after making about a 4” square, decided that I wanted to try mitered square knit instead, but have not frogged it and started over yet. I have no idea if I am spelling mitered correctly and don’t feel like looking it up right now.

Behold the mighty Bulova 5AR:

No it's not mighty and no you've never heard of it. Bulova made them from '61 to '63. This one is a '61. Bulova is cool because once upon a time they were American. Lindbergh wore one across the Atlantic. They produced the first TV commercial in history and people still use the Bulova School manual as the go-to guide for watchmaking. They were bought by Citizen in 2008 and now who cares.

This is all I have of my little Bulova friend. Band and case are gone; probably melted for scrap decades ago, or at least discarded. Little miss 5AR is 13x15x3mm. You could, in fact, fit the movement inside a Tums and none of it would show (except the crown, maybe). This is probably why it still exists: she ticks. She's been adjusted to the max range to slow her down and she's still about 5 minutes fast in 4 out of 5 positions (she's a minute slow in pendant up) which fundamentally means her mainspring is kaput. Her mainspring is 1.3mm wide and fits in a toothed barrel prolly 5mm in diameter. And ain't nobody around what wants to change that out even if they could but bloody hell - 13x15mm.

Because she's running well enough to time I threw her on the timing machine and because it was time to tweak I threw her in one of my movement holders. But then she stopped after about 7 minutes. Which is about where you go "wait a minute that's weird" and you wind her again and she starts up and you go "hmmm.... magnetism?" and you throw it next to a compass and it's magnetized to fuck and you go "okay let's get this out of the movement holder because it has about 18 times as much metal" and then it's no longer magnetized and then you go "wait a minute" and it turns out that your movement holder has decided to become magnetized and then you go "okay it's about time to buy a degausser" and you're inches from dropping $40 on an ancient K&D on eBay rather than $30 on any of dozens of cheap shitty Chinese crapfests on Amazon or eBay because they last seconds as does 90% of the Chinese crapfests on Amazon or eBay these days so you know what? K&D are bloody American and you can buy them from a bloody American retailer and they're only $70 and really, it's about time to buy some other stuff too so I have $180 worth of watchmaking tools showing up Priority Mail and other than the demagnetizer they'll fit in a ziploc baggie with room for a sandwich.

I would have gotten further if I hadn't spent most of the week configuring a new computer with three accounts and eight email accounts per user account on an OS that was never ready for prime time using apps developed in Slovenia and supported by underpaid teenagers found on Mechanical Turk.

So firstly, here’s the rabbit I’m currently working on. It’s turning out a bit different from my initial drawing in a few big ways. Firstly, the rabbit is facing the opposite direction than in my drawing. I accidentally traced the stencil on the fabric without flipping the rabbit over, so if I was to have it facing the right direction, the wrong side of the fabric would be showing. Which, on the one hand, oops. On the other hand though, compositionally, I kind of like this layout better. Second, in the original picture there weren’t any leaves showing from the tree, just big open sky. Once I laid out all of the fabric though, it looked pretty awkward, so I decided to change that. On the plus side, there’s now more color in the whole piece and it looks better. On the negative side, there’s a lot less sky now. On the neutral side, now the whole perspective is thrown off and now we have a giant, probably six to ten foot tall rabbit on the loose here. Which, I’m okay with. What’s a rabbit if anything other than a really tiny cow?

Anyhow, I gotta finish sewing the pieces together, then do a BOAT LOAD of embroidery to bring out shapes and details, then finish the piece. I still got some work ahead of me, but overall, I’m pretty pleased with how things are coming out.

This is my jean jacket. I love this jacket. Like I said in Pubski, it’s almost ten years old and because I wear it a lot, it’s starting to show its age.

The worse offender is the collar, where it’s starting to fray at the point where it folds. Every time I wash it, the frays come out a little bit worse. They’re kind of unsightly. So I fixed them.

What I ended up doing was cutting out the frays and take some old shirt fabric of mine and inserted it underneath and sewed it all in. It’s a pretty thick fabric and on the sturdy side, but it’s a lot more flexible than the denim is, so I ended up folding it over to double the layers before sewing it in, hoping that it’ll hold better. I liked the result so much that two days later, I tackled another section of the collar.

This time I added a red denim patch. I’m liking the way things are turning out. At first the collar wasn’t behaving like it used to, which is understandable, but after wearing it a couple of times it’s like it always was, which I think is a good sign. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that’s all the patching it needs at the moment, so I don’t think I’ll have anything like that to add for a while. That said . . .

There are some areas where the creases are just about to come undone, and because there’s no seam line stitched in near them to keep frays from advancing when they do, they might be a focus for repair as well. I’m thinking of maybe doing hole stitches up and down those areas to keep them in place, but I’m open to other suggestions. Maybe from goobster, flac, or _refugee_ if you guys have any? I’m not a tailor so I’m just kind of winging it.

Anywho, that’s what I’m working on. I look forward to seeing everyone else’s projects!

Man I swore I took photos of the PC. All I have is this the boxes, the CPU fan being put in and the finished product but it's got a tempered glass side so it's all reflective.

Anyway, Started with all of these - https://imgur.com/a/aXstYW1

All but the SX-700 worked. In my haste to buy these things, I didn't notice it was intended for a much smaller case and the power supply cables simply didn't reach. This can be altered but not quickly (at least not quickly by me), so my friend who helped me pick out the parts gave me his spare Power Supply as he felt guilty for not checking that one link and approving of all the others.

Mostly installed into the motherboard - https://imgur.com/a/qg9xu2s

I can't get these photos to embed properly for some reason, I'm doing something wrong but hopefully nobody minds having to click the links to see. Here I've installed the RAM, the CPU and it's cooler (big ass fan centre stage) and the ssd up near the top. Installing the motherboard was surprisingly easy but I was very nervous handling it all together with my clumsy rugby hands.

Here it is just sitting there doing nothing - https://imgur.com/a/0NvV3Aj

Poor quality, I was taking these very sporadically. I'll get a better one of all the lights when it powers up tonight.

But yeah, that's all done! On to the garden next - our peas need stakes, they're getting too tall.

I'm waiting until after the New Year's. :)

Lots of love!!!

A (WIP) update for now:

Lots of organizing. Digital and real.

re-creating some invention stuff.

Some drafts for the AA Central Office.

I've got a painting in mind.

Working for an invention company starting Jan.

Sobriety. It is a constant work in progress for me.

Poetry being turned into music!!! Good news!!!

I am able to actually meet a deadline for music!!!

Thx for the tag, kingmudsy!

I want to turn this in to an actual, well crafted song: