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.

The History of Balloon Animals

There is little in my internet wanderings about balloons that doesn't begin with the ugly truth that much history begins with.

It's gross.

The first balloons, and the only for many centuries, were dried and inflated animal bladders. Intestines were used for long ones. Not much less disgusting if you ask me, but all those ancients didn't which is fine because so few ever do. Ask me that is.

If you were to ask me to apply logic with no research involved (my favorite kind) these were probably more regular toy like than the balloons we know today. Balls for playing keep away or maybe floaty toys for playing in the rivers and lakes and oceans. I don't actually know, but it seems right somehow, doesn't it?

There is some evidence that Aztecs twisted animals from their balloons and burned them in sacrifice. I found that here. Brings a whole new creepy to the clowns of today doesn't it?

In any case, the first balloons as we know them were made from rubber by a man named Michael Faraday in 1824. He was doing experiments with hydrogen. It was a year later though that the first toy balloons were on the market. A liquid rubber came with a syringe to blow them up with. Oh yeah, THAT sounds safe for the kiddies. We have a gentleman names Thomas Hancock to thank for those.

The vulcanized rubber balloons that are closest to the ones we use today at so many events came out in 1847, so really they aren't that old.

History is confliced on the first man to decide to twist the balloons into creepy hats and animals. All accounts have it around 1938 at the Pittsburgh Magicians' Convention by a H.J. Bonnert. Little did they know then.

So this is the first craft I'm attempting. One good, and possibly best reason is that it's cheap. I've now spent $1.59 on a package of long balloons at Target, and I'm about set to go. It's suggested that I get a balloon pump as well, but what's the fun if I don't blow myself light headed?

No fun at all. Tune in and see if I pass out.

Boredom Incarnate

I do absolutely nothing with my evenings and weekends. Well, see friends and family, watch movies, empty the cat boxes. Yet, I'm envious of so many others. The ones that have a project to go home to, one they yearn to be a part of after spending the work day wherever degrading place they spend it.

I thought, maybe, I should try them all. This is my record of all the hobbies I tried. How I liked it, how successful I was, bizarre comments that spring in my head and most importantly, how much the project set me back.

Welcome.