New Adventures

Only a week in and I've already tripped up on my challenge. Although, technically I didn't say I was going to post everyday. Just no more than one 250-word post a day. But I have really been enjoying putting my daily snippets up for the past week. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well yesterday with  my eyes falling out of my head well before 8pm. I was tired and dizzy and not wanting to do much of anything. Not even craft!!

Today, although still hot, is somewhat better for me - even though I was up at 5am to catch a train to Sydney (which turned out to be an hour late!) and suffered my usual train sickness! But I think I am still feeling so excited from the information session I went to today at the International School of Colour and Design! I've been thinking I'd really like to pick up a professional creative course, and the courses offered at the school sound so fantastic. Walking around their exhibition today filled me with so much inspiration. It is the first time the idea of a course has made my heart sing like this, to the point of wanting to cry with happiness and excitement. My partner and I have agreed we'll work out a payment arrangement so I can get this course done in six months, on campus. I am so overwhelmed with excitement right now!! I love starting new things. But I think you might already know that :)

Hello There, Hexy!

Feeling unwell on your day off is always a bummer. But lucky for me, I'm not one to rest up when I should be – well now much, anyway! So I figured that today it would be a good excuse to leave all housework and other things I'd usually do before sitting down to craft, and just spend the day crafting. Actually, this was my plan all along, but now I didn't have to feel guilty for it!! The result is that I finished the hexagons I've been working on this week, which was a smaller project than I had calculated. Even so, it was about 10+ hours of hand sewing and I must say the finished product is quite lovely! It's here on my Etsy store, and for the work involved I think I may have listed it way below price.

 I have some leftover green hexagons which I've made into flowers for another project, which will also be quite nice when finished (probably tomorrow afternoon after work!). I'm quite enjoying and feeling very inspired by paper pieced art at the moment, so look out for more designs soon!

The Big Book Meets the Small Screen

My return to work after the Christmas holidays today heralded a nice little surprise for me as I was leaving. Thursdays off for the rest of the month!! So I decided to celebrate my extra day off tomorrow by staying up late tonight crafting and watching the Game of Thrones series. Or at least, watching the first episode. I must say, having just finished the book last night, I'm not yet sure how I'm going to rate this series going by the first episode. I really enjoyed the book, but I do have one small gripe. Being a connoisseur of fantasy novels, I felt there was something strange about Martin's writing. For the most part I felt like I was reading some political history drama and the fantasy side of it was an afterthought. Indeed, I often forgot it was meant to be of the fantasy genre. So when elements of fantasy popped up it felt out of place and like I was reading a separate book altogether. However, I will give Martin one thing, his writing was vivid! And I feel that that is something that can never be caught on screen. Martin created such a huge world and I fear that the story of that world will never be done any cinematic justice. After all, no amount of cinematics is a match for imagination! But I guess that is something that waits to be seen as the series goes on. 

Damn You, Technology!

Well, today was the scorcher that was expected. While there was actually a nice, cool breeze blowing when I woke up this morning, the mercury slowly crept upwards and before long it was very warm inside, which made me less inclined to be productive. However, I remembered I had promised myself I was going to try to work on getting some better photos of the items in my Etsy store. The start of this year has seen me acquire the new iPad and the iPhone 5. Both of which I am loving. So I took my photos on my iPhone and then used iCloud to transfer them to the iPad. However, being the technologically backwards person that I am I didn't realise that this used up data over Wi-Fi and with the number of photos I took, I managed to chew through my partner's data limit before the end of the night and the transfer. I don't think he will be too happy when he gets home from work tonight, and next week I might have to look into having broadband connected, rather than relying on the individual mobile broadband devices we both currently use. In the meantime, I'm going to give old fashioned cable syncing between my new Apple products and my Windows 7 laptop a go. 

And here are some of the photos I captured on my iPhone. I must say, I wasn't too impressed with some of them, but they are better than what I had.

 

Summer is Hell

I think summer is well and truly here. And I must say that I'm not a huge fan of it. Let's face it: being a daywalking ranga makes the sun my enemy, and when else is the sun at its fiercest than in Summer?! It really does feel like Hell. While today was a tad cooler than yesterday and is meant to be a whole heap cooler than tomorrow, the only thing I appreciated the heat for today was finishing the painting of the bathroom. Two coats of paint dry in no time and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Just the window and door to do tomorrow, if I can bear to work through the heat and/or go to the hardware store to pick up a Stanley knife so I can try to get the hinges unstuck. . But at least I was all done by 4pm, so I could sit down with some Doctor Who eps and stitch some hexagons for a small project I'm working on. Well, 100 one-inch hexagons is a small project in my mind. Even if they do take me a week or so to do. Here's how they're coming along.

Getting Things Done

Nothing pleases me more than to have a productive day. And I feel today was just that. After driving home from my parents house in Newcastle - a 250km trip that takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes - I was really quite buggered. However I had been intending to paint my bathroom since May last year and with this warmer weather I decided I was going to get it done before I go back to work on Wednesday. Now, when I get started on a project I can become quite obsessive about it and given it was about 4pm when I started I decided I had to curb my obsessive nature. I was only going to do the prep work today - sanding and washing walls. But I knocked that over pretty quickly and decided I could get a couple of coats on the ceiling before the sun went down and the air cooled. This means that tomorrow I can do the undercoat and if I don't get the final coat done tomorrow I still have Tuesday to get it done. And spreading the work out over a couple of days like this means I will still be able to get some craft work in. Having been so busy over the past week, it will be nice to spend some time in my craft room again!

 

A Challenge is Set

Hello and Welcome to Blue Scraps. Before we start there is something you should know about me. Actually, three things. I talk too much, I'm a homebody, and I am easily distracted. This leads to me sitting at home, rambling to myself over unfinished projects. So what better way to kick off the New Year than with a challenge to focus more on what I am doing, to seek inspiration away from my abode, and to compile it into no more than one 250-word-or-less post per day. This is not my first attempt at blogging, and like many things I start, it is not something I have seen through for any great period of time. So I am further challenging myself to stick to this blogging thing for at least six weeks. Already I am feeling daunted! I give you these little snippets of my life from the Blue Mountains, Australia and I am calling them my Blue Scraps.