The Thumb is Green

I can so totally grow A plant from seed. That's right, one plant out of 5 has sprouted. Lookie lookie:

It's the sensitive plant so I keep touching it hoping to see it shy away, either it's slow or it's not ripe yet for the shirking. SHIRK DAMN YOU.

Also I saw this where the moon flower was planted:

I'm fairly sure that's mold. Does mold growing count?

Yeah, I didn't think so. This weekend though? I'm shooting rockets. Yay fire and science!

How Doth My Garden Grow

Gardening was never ever going to be a hobby I researched or talked about or tried or pretended to know existed. Plants and I have a life long disagreement. They die in the places I want them to grow and grow in the places I want them to die.

I've been begging my husband for years to let me salt the earth around the house. He'll give in. In the meantime routine cleaning and reorganizing of the house found this:

It was a gift to me several years ago in one of those "who can buy the weirdest thing" wars. She knows I don't do plant, but she also knows I adore creepy. The whole kit and terrarium sat around the house mostly because I have to grow these plants from seeds.

SEEDS? Are you kidding me? If they grow at all they will be stunted and diseased just from my having tried. Just to prove it, I took it all out of the box and put the thing together.

All these parts:

Dirt and directions and potential living things with little plastic skulls and spiders to decorate the dirt with. I can't believe I'm actually doing this. This will never work.

The plants are moonflower which the directions say can grow 8 - 10 feet tall. Not in that little box but sure whatever. It blooms in the morning and I can eat the leaves and flowers. The cats will be so happy.

Then "sensitive plant" which shies away from you when touched or cold or dark. It takes over an hour to open up again.

Dracena, which from what I can tell only has "funny lookin" as it's description. "Ghostly white and covered in a strange white powder". A lot of people in town look like that actually.

Black Dragon which is black and red in color.

Last but not least, Aloe. Which is um...goth? WHAT? How completely random. Also the green thumbs I know can't keep Aloe alive. If it grows I'll be sure to kill it.

In any case I followed the directions and put dirt water and seeds in the little box, applied my decals and closed the box. Now I wait.

The good news is I only have to water it every 4 - 6 weeks. I might not kill it by terminal flightiness. Well, I still might.

A Whole Lot More of Jesus...

When I picked up the freakishly large latch hook Jesus kit I was more than thrilled at the prospect. Also remember I didn't know it was so big until I opened the box. I was all set to do other tremendously tacky latch hook kits and I even found a SIX FOOT LONG one of the Last Supper for the wee price of $450.00.

I was still mostly unimpressed with teady bears and sweet cherubic angels or whatever and wondered if there was a program out there where I could create my own patterns. What I found was a jewel, a free pattern creator. You can find it here. Anything and everything I could ever want in latch hook. Amazing.

Then I really got going on the one I have. Oh. So. Boring. First this color then two of that one and make sure the baggies of yarn are zipped and not hidding under the dog's butt and take my sharpie and mark that one square off the pattern to ensure I don't get lost and hours and hours and endless staring at what might look like Jesus, but really doesn't. Then I got 1/3 done, and just last night 1/5 done. I was ready to show the world how much this project sucks but then I looked at the pictures:

1/3 done with suspicious cat:

1/2 Done:

Yes blury, but the least blury that I took and By Jesus that actually looks like Jesus!! I had no idea. Up close it's an unrecognizable mess. I'm still not sure I'm up for more latch hook after this even if it could be the Joey Ramone picture of my choosing.

A Sad Farewell to Balloon Animals

If you really want to get a party going go out and get a giant bag of balloons from your local card and party store and a book from the library on different animals.

Between the endless innuendos, the made up hats and critters, the popping and the general frolicking a good time can be had by all. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of this. The book does go back to the library tomorrow so I spent some time today creating what I could. After two and half hours my results are pretty dismal. I must need more practice. I can't even imagine doing this quickly in front of screaming children and actually hope to succeed in this...we'll call it a craft. Cheap, with easy basics, but most certainly not easy.

These are the pile of my success for today. They mostly look like they were supposed to. Mostly. Here are the ones that are my favorite:

Mouse:

Bird:

Octopus with 4 balloons:

Poodle:

Of course in 2.5 hours there was much swearing and failure, often in my own measurement of the bubbles so tails and noses are much much too long. Those swans are really sad looking though. See if you can pick them out?

All the real swearing though was for all these sad dead soldiers.

Hookin It - Long Term Project

It seems lately I've been spending a lot of time wandering around craft stores. What should I buy? What should I try? It's been a very long time since I actually looked at everything in the store. Turns out doing that is bad for me. I see the cheesiest tackiest thing and I know it must be mine.

Hence, Latch Hook Jesus.

It was totally more than I wanted to spend (39.95) but I had a gift card years old gathering dust that I was holding for just the pefect project. It turns out once you envisage a latch hook Jesus on your wall you cannot turn away. I did try. I failed. The spirit called to me.

I happily brought it home and opened the box. Surely it can't be that hard? Of course it can. First thing I noticed was that it's HUGE. It's 3 feet tall. It certainly taught me to look at the dimensions printed on the box a little closer. It's in inches though, and that means math, which I avoid if I possibly can. But I was still excited. Too excited to take pictures. I dove in right away.

Yarn, check. Jesus check, pattern check....no hook. Had to go out and spend 2.59 on a hook. But now? Now I'm ready. Except that the yarn comes in umpteen bundles with all the colors swirled together un - freaking - marked like this:

I rallied on. I picked out white bits and cream bits and...vanilla bits? They all looked totally the same and of some colors there were only 4 in each bundle. It took me an entire Alan Arkin/Audry Hepburn movie to get one row. I decided next session I would be smart. I spent hours deciding which color went with what name and separated them all into individual baggies, like so:

I strongly recommend this method. Even husbands can help with the sorting, as long as he has a good light.

I've spent about two weeks on the thing now, at various times in front of the telly. I'm 1/6th done. It's not as boring as I thought it would be but mostly I think that's a mixture of trying to find yarn baggies under sleeping dog buts and well...it's Jesus! Here he is, one sixth done:

That little box in the corner is a DVD box for scale. I love you ginormous Jesus head!!

Let's Twist Again

Balloon animals for fun and zero profit? Certainly there is some value to having them not made by clowns. No one likes a clown, or so I've heard. But here we go. We started with some inflating with the handy inflatorator. I can call it that. I've also been calling it Zombie Bob.




We only popped 3 in the process of coming up with on viable latex, not animal bladder. On the first one the little ring on the open end broke off. On the second one the head of my inflatorator poopped off sending balloon everywhere. The third one was just holy. I guess bum balloons happen. But here it is, one balloon on it's way to becoming a dog, because a dog is the first lesson on all the websites. I used this one.




Now for some ears and a face.



And some front legs:



And the last twist is a completed dog. The blue one, I didn't twist the other one. His brain came like that.





The husbands attempt at the dog:

It's a bird. It's a hat? It's? Not a clue. I did what the directions said, or they didn't make any sense. There were a lot of words.

The beginnings of a swan. That popped on the next twist. No green swans allowed apparently.

It's a sword! That's what it was titled I swear!

Inflatable What?

Ok, so in my readings I've found that you don't want to inflate your own balloons with your air. There are always screamings of unsanitariness, but I ignore those. I breathe on you and you don't die. The air from the balloon won't kill you either.

The problem really is that I can't do it. Maybe some of you can, but I huffed and puffed and promptly passed out. Dogs and Cats love it when I pass out. Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating but it certainly wasn't going to happen that I self-inflate 25 balloons so I tried something.

We have a battery operated tire pump with attachments for all the fun things in life we inflate. Like tires. I really don't like spending money and my husband suggested I try it so we did.

Only 2 seconds to POP with all that pressure. 24 balloons to go. I broke down and bought a cheap inflater pump. 1.99 cheap. Gotta love that. It's a giant pain. You really have to *ahem* go to town on the thing in order to inflate the balloon, but work it does.

I only made the "choking the gopher" joke once. I swear.

Of course now I have to actually attempt to make something.

Before I'm off I should say that I did pop 2 more balloons. One popped whilst practicing twisting and one while trying to tie it off.

Man, the innuendos are thick with this hobby.

22 balloons left.