New Arch Nemesis

Yeah. You read it here first. I have a new enemy in my life: the neighbor's cat. That little feline from hell has been pooping in my tiny little garden. Hey cat, I am trying to beautify my space, make light of the fact that I am renting an apartment. Do you really have to poop on my parade? How do I know this is happening?

1. It smells like poop.
2. There are tiny mounds in my garden which have tiny turds hidden inside.
3. I caught the bastard in action. Looked like this:

(Dramatic reenactment.)

Why do I deserve this Mr. Cat? Whatever your motives are I may never know but here are my possible courses of action:

1. Start scooping poop in my garden. I despise this idea because I hate cleaning my own cat's litter.
2. Create a decoy. I could pretend like I was being a nice person and give my neighbors' kids a sand box with the hopes that the cat will poop in there.
   
3. Make a scarecrow... scarecat. Looks like a mean dog. I have a feeling that the cats might catch on.

Now I haven't done any leg work like looking up on the skynets about deterring cats from garden pooping. This might be a good first step. Nah I will get irate and then try my cockamamie schemes. Much more entertaining.

A little creative planting

Jenny gave me a book a while back called Garden Anywhere which taught me about creative planter gardening. The book emphasized looking at your surroundings to find hidden gems for your garden. One night Kim and I took a walk around my neighborhood to enjoy the night but I had an anterior motive: to find a cinder block or brick with a hole to plant tiny succulents which I like to call "hen and chicks". Mission accomplished... which means I was carrying a cinder block around the neighborhood.... I transformed the block by spray painting it green and stenciling a little sparrow onto it. I hope my little plants take to the soil!

I started this project on Saturday and finished it in the afternoon on Sunday. Quite productive (and I guess hermit-like) of me. I altered the tunic pattern so it was made with short sleeves and two different fabrics. Voila! My grandma told me that it looked "very sexy and sassy" just like my haircut. My grandma is a very smart lady if you can't tell.

Hope you don't mind the blurry iPhone action and messy bedroom. Must learn the ancient art of self portraits.

Future Project!

I have really loved jumpers and I am feeling with my new time that I have on my hands about making this little number. I am thinking a light wool and a solid color. We'll see what I find at the fabric store. Stay posted.

Pesky fraying edges no more!

So I came upon this tutorial that I thought I would share. I finished a tunic a while back but did not finish the edges of the seams because I honestly didn't want to bother. Probably not the best idea to cut corners. As to be expected after a couple of washes the seams have started to fray. I know my next endeavor will be happening once school is done (end of this week yay!) and I want to make sure I do it right. I found a tutorial here about french seams. This technique prevents the fraying edges by encasing the seams. I will let you know how it goes. It will save me from zig-zag stitching most of the edges though I know I will be stuck with doing that for some of them. Welp, can't win them all I guess.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I had a tail.

Every morning I wake up to find Catface playing with her tail. I worry about that kitty sometimes.

I'm good at procrastinating.

Aaaaaaaaahhhh! The creative juices are a flowing! Yeah I did just write that and yes I am not deleting it. I just couldn't handle it anymore. I had to work on something. It seems like these past two days have been a tsunami of creativity because I have been so pent up with school work.

In Sarah's departure from Seattle she gave me this nice houseplant in anticipation that I would be taking over her cubicle I guess. In a botched coin flip for the cubicle, I did not get the cube and I took a space that was sans window (Okay, I only say that because I am a poor sport. I didn't win it fair and square.). The plant looked so sad without light so I brought him home and replanted him.

Yesterday at my local Fred Meyer I found a terracotta pot on sale. I gobbled it up and painted it while working on my hand towels. This morning I felt that the teal wasn't going to be good enough so I stenciled a tiny deer onto it. Well two but in the pictures you can only see one. I take no credit for the design of the deer. I got it from this book by Ed Roth called Stencil 101. I also did a quick spray coating onto the pot and gave Sarah's plant a new home. I think it will like living in my window sill.

Catface gets really tired when I run around making stuff. I don't blame her.

Pickin' and Jammin'

Yay! It's a sunny Sunday and I was productive with everything except my school work. I headed to NOAA and picked some blackberries from the campus. I came back to the house and did some freezer jamming. My yield was 7 jars. I used only 25% of the recommended sugar and what I tasted was pretty darn sweet. Keep your fingers crossed!

Pre-cooking and jarring:

Jam pyramid, much better than the food pyramid:

Let my dinos get your hands clean.

I needed a break from school work. So rather than spending my time becoming a vegetable I worked on a project that I intended on doing since I moved into my own place. Personalized bathroom hand towels. Duh. I got the idea from Amy Butler's In Stitches. I used the dino fabric that I bought for my quilt. I think they turned out pretty well and they will put a smile on my face when I dry my hands. Sigh. Love.

Beautiful video

Saw this on RadioLab's website, thought I would share.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

String art meets cubicle wall

Because I am really good at spending my money (Hey I am stimulating the economy people) I have been trying to find way to cut back. Projects are one of those places where I am looking to spend less on but still be creative. That means using up the fabric, thread, yarn, etc. that I have left over from other projects.

Recently I secured a job at NOAA which allowed me to move into my own cubicle. It pretty much allowed me to at least triple the wall space of my work place. So this nest away from home needs some Tyanne touches. As posted before, I have been slightly obsessed with string art. It looks cool, has a retro feel to it and it allows me to create things with found objects at my home. Case in point: office string art. I used pins that are here for hanging stuff up on the cube walls, pined them down into a square and brought in two different colors of thread from home.

I am only kind of happy with this first try. I am not so excited about the colors. The design is only "meh" too. But I like the idea. The beauty of it is that I can just take it down and start over without feeling terrible about it.

Let's pretend I have a green thumb

So my friend Jenny has this awesome blog (http://seedystl.blogspot.com/) about her garden in St. Louis which inspired me to plant my own garden. What have I learned in the process. Well, summer this year really sucks in Seattle. Today, for example, it's in the upper 60s. Yeah it's August. There might not be any place better than the summer in the Northwest.... But this summer will be the exception. Where is my tan?

Enough complaining.

Since I became a big kid and moved into my very own apartment I seized the little bit of free space in my communal yard to plant a little garden. I read the book "The Secret Garden" when I was little and romanticized about finding a space to make my own green space. Last summer I had a sad patio planter garden which produced a couple of tomatoes and that was about it. This summer I planted tomatoes, kale, summer squash and snap peas straight into the ground. I also had two left over planters which alpine strawberries found a home.

My garden in its infantile stage:



My garden this weekend:



The kale has started to grow and I have harvested a few meals from it. In fear that it would get out of control like kale in many of my friends' gardens, I have been grazing on it before I have way too much and I let it go to waste.
The peas have become a bush and are struggling to climb the trellis. Jenny suggested tying yarn as a intermediate object for them to grab onto which seems to be working. The little guys are flowering and hopefully I will have snacks by fall.

My three tomato plants have started to grow but I am afraid that this colder snap will not do them any good. One thing I did learn this summer is that tomatoes do not like to get their leaves wet (thanks Jenny).

Squash is a struggle for me. The plant looks to be growing but the little fruits keep falling off. Is it prematurely balding? I do not know.

I love alpine strawberries. They are just little guys that are very sweet. Nom nom nom. I get about a handful at a time. Nothing is better than just a-snacking on them.

Just a little project I have been working on. Luckily I haven't had to do much weeding, just making sure they are watered. Maybe I will have some worms making some fertilizer soon. Who knows!

Shrugging is cool, people.

Hello Friendos,

I had this great intent on blogging about my projects all the time but unfortunately my whole going-back-to-school-so-I-can-get-a-permanent-job-with-NOAA thing is really dragging me down. It leaves me with little time to work on silly, yet cool, projects. In an earlier post I put up a picture of a shrug that I made. I decided that I wanted a shrug to wear with dresses in the Spring and late summer nights. I made mine with a tan, un-dyed wool yarn which was also organic. I made the shrug 3/4 length for no other reason other than I thought that it would be lovely that way. Here is the pattern that I used.

The finished piece:

Office Bandit Strikes Again

After about a year in silence I have struck again with my workplace tomfoolery. I was inspired by this Decor It Yourself episode (below) and have been playing with string art post cards. I was ready to start working on a bigger scale. After I moved cubicles I found some spare yarn sitting around. Martha was my most recent victim.