Cool news!
“Name me a food, and I’ll tell you a story.”
My creative nonfiction piece “Food Memories” is in issue 43.2 of Room Magazine.
Cool news!
“Name me a food, and I’ll tell you a story.”
My creative nonfiction piece “Food Memories” is in issue 43.2 of Room Magazine.
Sometimes I like to imagine that the things I want to write will just come to exist by themselves. But I’m learning the hard way that even my imagination has limitations.
I used to think goal-setting was for nerds, but now I understand why people bother with it. In this post, I’ll break down some of my goals and endeavors over the next few months. I realized the other day that I sew and knit to procrastinate, so my primary objective is to use my time more wisely to develop my writing.
Let me know what you think.
This month I’m taking part in Me Made May. Me Made May is an internet movement created by Zoe from the internet challenging people who make their own clothes to wear the things they make throughout May.
I, Justina (@justinaforever), sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’17. I endeavor to wear at least one me-made item of clothing each day for the duration of May 2017.
I try to wear the things that I make every day anyway, but Me Made May makes me realize I need to do a few extra things this month.
Thing is, what I really should be doing instead of knitting and sewing is working on all the stories I want to write. So here are my goals for all of you to see. I’m declaring them here so you can hold me accountable to them.
But how to accomplish these goals? With these here rules:
i have dreams u know
Am I doing this all wrong? What are your hopes and dreams? Don’t be shy! Let me know in the comments…
This tutorial will show you how to make a simple drawstring backpack. I’ve adapted it from Sam DeRose’s great tutorial in Make: Sew a Durable Drawstring Bag.
This particular drawstring backpack features French seams and grommets for extra durability.
Drawstring backpacks are great for taking stuff to work, hiking, shopping, carrying cleats to games, etc., etc. (more…)
It seems like every sewer (sew-er?) on Instagram is all about these City Gym Shorts from Purl Bee… including me! They are flattering and adorable.
Used the leftover bright floral fabric from my Circle Skirt dress to make these. I got the fabric from King’s Textiles at Queen and Spadina. It might be for quilts. I don’t know. It’s cotton.
BRB, I’m going to make some more.
On Friday evening, I had a sudden whim to make a lamp.
Evidence:
This is the lamp that we made out of garbage, essentially. (click to enlarge)
And here’s how we made it:
First, we collected some materials and tools:
… and got to work.
** First things first: Evan is my favourite person to do random craft projects with, because he’s willing to do ALL the dangerous stuff, like drilling glass, lifting heavy objects, mixing hazardous materials, and other things I’m hesitant to try. In fact, he’s not only willing — I’m pretty sure it fills him with manly glee. **
Anyway, first we went outside, where Evan drilled a hole in the bottom of the bottle for the wiring to go through. The glass dust smelled kind of toxic. I regret inhaling it. The cat next door kept trying to hang out with us but I told it to go away because it’s cute and so I wanted to protect it from the glass particles.
Then we had to shorten the pencil crayons because I wanted the crystal-looking part of the bottle to show. Sharpening 44 pencil crayons is no easy task — just ask the blister on my middle finger. 😦 Eventually, I figured out that cutting the pencils to the right length before sharpening them was much more ergonomic and efficient than trying to sharpen them to half their height.
And then we hot-glued the pencil crayons to the bottle. I didn’t feel like using the black and white pencils, so we collected some twigs and whittled them down to look like pencils and glued them into the space that needed filling.
Then Evan affixed the lamp components and stuff to the top of the bottle. The lamp looked cool but very, very naked, so I spent a long time Googling “how to make a lampshade” and such, but most of the DIY tutorials assume that you already have a lampshade that you want to make over, which we didn’t. I had no luck finding a good one at the Value Village/op shop around the corner. What to do, what to do???
Here’s what I did:
I fashioned two big rings from the one wire hanger I could find at home, and used some random crafting wire to make a sloppy mounting thingy for the upper ring so that the lampshade could sit on top of the harp thingy. Then I glued the canvas to the wire rings with the glue gun. I didn’t really measure or try to do any part of this with precision, so the fabric puckers in some spots and isn’t a true cylinder. You know, I’m not even sure that the rings are the same size.
The whole thing looks tragically handmade, but so does the rest of my workspace, so whatever. It was very fun and it gave me something to write home about.
And so, I leave you with a picture of Kermit praising the godly new lamp.
I’ll let you know if the lamp catches fire. I wasn’t very sure about the canvas shade, but so far, so good.
Thank you for reading my blog post. Coming soon… a new story about the Underwear Tiger, who has it out for the wind we had in Toronto on Saturday because it blew the underwear off his head and made him feel very, very naked. Poor baby!
who am I ?
In light of some terrible thing that has befallen me, I have decided to dedicate a part of my website to my Former Left Knee Ligament, henceforth named: my FLUNCKEL.
RIP, Flunckel. I loved you though I didn’t know it. And now that you are gone, I no longer feel whole. You are gone, and you have left a flunckel-shaped hole in my knee.
Seriously, though. Today I met with the surgeon, “Dr. Ted.” First his “fellow,” “Dr. April,” told me that some of his hockey buddies still play hockey with no ACLs, because Dr. April loves to play his hockey three times a week. Then he called me a frisbee-playing “weekend warrior,” which I think is a terrible misnomer, because first of all, I can’t play Ultimate at ALL right now. Second, I would refer to myself as a weekend wimp, given that my weekends have consistently consisted of watching cartoons while eating chocolatey cereal in my underwear. Like a wimp. Then Dr. April said that I should probably get surgery. Then both of the doctors made a big deal of the laxity of my knee’s pivot.
Now for some good news. Hooray for muscle atrophy!!!! I can now easily slip my atrophied left leg into half of a pair of skinny jeans!
Pictures to come!