2 posts tagged “supplies”
Oh, dear. So now my fiance, who I have depended on to be the Hauler of Stuff throughout our relationship but particularly since our car accident (he wasn't very injured, and healed quickly), has hurt his back.
Worse, he has no idea how! It's been bothering him mildly on and off for the last week. He drove 90 minutes each way on Thanksgiving Day, sitting in an uncomfortable folding chair most of the day in the interim, then on Saturday and Sunday, he exhibited at a convention where he also sat all day on uncomfortable chairs.
He takes stuff into the con, too, but the thing I can think of that is most likely to have injured him is his Tub O' Original Art For Sale, which is so heavy that I can't even attempt to pick it up without pain. (It's several hundred sheets of bristol board, around 12x15ish.) Don't know, though. There was no moment where he did something and then thought, "I shouldn't have done that."
He has lots of good drugs from the doctor, two days off work, and a heating pad that I lent him after his appointment this morning.
On top of all this, as mentioned in my last psot, my dog has been sick this past week. Not too horribly sick, but she had a bladder infection and a yeasty ear infection. She's still being treated for both. $400 so far; I took responsiblity for half of it. *groan*
I found the missing library book I mentioned in that post. It was right where it should have been, in my stack of library books on the part of the bookshelf that I reserve for them, only I couldn't see it. It was between two larger books. I was looking at the spines, and the book I sought was pushed back a little, so the spines of the larger books met around it! You could only see that it was there by looking at the stack from a different angle.
Button Angst
And now, to the title of the post!
The other night, as a Present To Me, I ordered this purple cashmere v-neck cardigan and the matching tank that you can see in the picture. They were on sale ($60 total), and I like to be warm in the winter. It isn't here yet.
I've heard some bad things about this year's Target cashmere (like, "it's thin and itchy"), so we'll see. Last year's was great. Eucalan wash -- I use the lavender version -- helps soften most protein-fiber clothing, and you can also use a bit of diluted hair conditioner on cashmere to soften it further, as long as you can stand the conditioner being against your skin.
It seems as though the buttons will color-match, but they look whitish in some of the photos, and it's difficult to tell whether they match or not. They might have picked up a flash reflection, or they might just be light-colored buttons.
I love the intaglio/lens/cabochon buttons made by Winky and Dutch, which are a picture under a clear dome set into a metal backing and which the company itself seemingly only sells to merchants. Some time ago a friend's cousin added an entire set of their pin-up girl buttons to a sweater she had de-and-re-constructed for herself.*
It looked really cool, but the buttons themselves are pricey, as buttons go, and not all that easy to find. I'm more likely to buy something in person than to mail order it. For example, somewhere -- still in the mess of boxes from my last move -- indifferently packed by the worst movers ever, and not labelled -- I have W&D barettes, the "Sad Puppy" design in a hair-pin setting, from a shop I used to go to. Their other jewelry is not too difficult to find.
So, I noticed that ReproDepot has been having a sale on the W&D buttons, which they sell at a decent price to begin with, most of them in two sizes. It seems like they might be trying to sell through their remaining stock. The selection has decreased over the last few years; they used to carry many more "sets" than they do, IIRC, and a lot more single-button designs.
The problem is that my sweater, assuming I even want to replace the buttons on it, has five buttons. I don't like either of the Sci-Fi collections enough to buy one; I wanted the Robot or Tourism collection. No robots to be seen, and they only have a few of the Tourism buttons, one of which doesn't really match the others.
I was going to get London/Tokyo/Hollywood/Miami, all of which have blue skies, but the only other one available is Brooklyn Bridge, which doesn't. Pegasus would have been OK as the fifth match, but it was unavailable in the smaller size, about 1/3" or so, that I needed. This is the size for "shirt" buttons. There is a larger size, more like 3/4", which would work for stuff like chunky handknit sweaters. I have at least one or two of each, but not enough to work for this project.
Some searching took me to EQuilter, which has tons of cool stuff and seems to be the only other regular online merchant of these buttons. They have a larger selection (with a few more designs at the "previous page" link), but they only sell them in sets of three -- usually three of the same button, but sometimes three thematically linked buttons -- or in larger sets. They do have the robot set.
They charge, however, much more than ReproDepot does. The buttons I wanted are around $1.50-$2, depending on whether or not there's a sale, at ReproDepot. They break down to over $3 each at EQuilter, probably because they only sell the larger size (it seems). This is a lot more than I want to spend on potentially putting wacky buttons on a sweater (even $1.50 is possibly excessive, but I've wanted to do this for so many years that I was willing to go for it).
End result: I bought six Tokyo buttons from ReproDepot for about $1.50 each. The other one I really liked was London, but I didn't think that mix-and-match would work unless each button was different, which I couldn't manage with ReproDepot's current selection. Since the sweater is purple - if I use it on that - the Tokyo design both seemed like a better match for purple and more appropriate in terms of color scheme. (Purple and sky blue seems more "Japanese" than "British", right?) Obviously, I bought one extra button "just in case."
It being Christmas, and having already bought the sweater set, I had to completely ignore every other thing I want from ReproDepot. (At the last link, it's the Ayumi Uyama felt animal kits: I like the deer, rabbit, dog, and duck, in order of preference. The Minigurumi kits are all pretty adorable, too: they look like designs from a book I have, Mame Wanko, which is all about tiny fabric dogs and their accessories.)
A Mysterious Yarn-Related Project
The other crafty thing I ordered lately was Lang Mille Colori yarn in color number 68, a sort of earthtone mix. Mille Colori is a self-striping wool/acrylic blend. #68 is on color chart 2, at that link, the strip on the far right.
This is for a mystery project for which I wanted a relatively tough self-striping yarn, worsted or bulky, with non-garish colors and thin, rapidly-changing stripes.
I looked at a bunch of Berroco yarns: Keltic (stripe pattern too long and subtle), Jasper (composition made me worried it would pill, didn't see an appropriate color scheme, stripes also too subtle), and Foliage (the only color I liked for the project had been discontinued, plus I was worried that the spin was too loose/uneven -- it seems that Foliage is basically Berroco's version of Kureyon). I nearly chose Keltic's "Argyll" or "Tartan" colors; my friend memorably described most of the other colors as "week-old stale vomit" -- ouch. I considered Noro Kureyon (too uneven) and Big Kureyon (not the right colors for this project), and Rowan Tapestry (DK weight, too drapey).
I found Mille Colori in a weird, serendipitous way... it kept popping up in Google Image Searches, then also popped up when I did a search on "self-striping" and variations of the term at the site where I almost ordered some Keltic.
I hope people like this thing when I'm done with it, because I really have agonized over the yarn. If it goes right, it'll be a free pattern. If not, I will cry real tears of tears: I've been planning it for months, and I'm putting off another project to do it, and as I mentioned a few posts back, my last attempt went really wrong.
* The same girl, who supposedly didn't even particularly like me, gave me this great pair of black Doc Martens oxfords that I wear to this day. They were almost new, but she was moving and wanted to travel light, packing most of the stuff she was taking into her soft guitar case around the instrument itself. The shoes were too weighty and bulky for her to take. I still think of her gratefully every time I wear the things... and last I heard, she was doing OK.
I've written a couple of posts that aren't public yet; they're hanging around waiting for me to finish them. Mostly book reviews. Actual content! Imagine that. But I've been busy with lots of other stuff, and Vox rarely behaves completely well for me (it's slightly over-scripted for dial-up internet).
The good news is that I won't be on dial-up after Saturday. We're finally getting a high-speed connection. On the bad side, we don't have wireless internet yet, so it won't reach up to the computer I'm using at the moment for a while (I ordinarily use the one downstairs, but the one up here in my room is a better computer). I might just pick up a wifi card for it this week and see if I can piggyback on a neighbor's connection for a while. Can't do anything secure from there, but I can browse....
Anyway, I have spent a truly obscene amount of money on scrapbooking supplies in the last week or so (like, enough for the router and the wifi card, actually). I was telling my friend R. about it, and she was jealous and wanted good pictures of some of it. This is the punky/gothy edition, since it appeals most to her interests. (Me and R, we both like to listen to Nick Cave a lot.) Actually, it's a first installment. What I have here does not equal an "obscene amount of money" spent on scrapbooking - this is more like $12 or so, except for the stamps I bought.
I bought a lot of Rusty Pickle stuff at one store. This is from their Addams Family collection. I bought two sheets of the Uncle Fester paper, since I liked both sides so much: one is a purple harlequin pattern with black cats, the other is pinwheel rounds made with stylized skeletons. I like Morticia's bats a lot too. You can't see them, but the corners of the checkerboard side of the Gomez paper have spiderwebs (click for a better view).
Gomez and Wednesday
I also bought stuff from the Pirate Princess collection. These are, top to bottom, Lane de Belleville (this one is particularly pretty - see the closeup), Mary Read, Grace O'Malley (the icons are really cool) and Elizabeth Swan (sic):
They make some other Pirate Princess supplies... some papers and tags I didn't like as much, one paper called Rachel Wall that I tried really hard to buy (but every sheet they had was a mess - take a look at the larger version and see what the "flowers" actually are), and some stickers and stamps that I didn't see. These are definitely on my personal wishlist:
I don't think I'd actually use those stickers, from the center sheet, in scrapbooking, though.
I also saw the Creative Imaginations / Marah Whatsherface (Johnson?) "Caution! Girl" collection. There's something about it, to be honest, that rubs me the wrong way... the chipboard stickers are glitter-encrusted (something I'd prefer to do myself, if I want it at all), the epoxy stickers have silly slogans like "bad hair day" and stuff about messy rooms. It seems like something a mom who didn't quite "get it" would buy to make layouts about her daughter, the Avril Lavigne fan. It just feels off. (I don't even like or buy epoxy stickers: I'm always seeing ones in packages that have warped in on themselves.)
However, they have some really cool brads that I almost bought, and that wouldn't be a bad fit tucked away somewhere on a Pirate Princess page. I promised R. I'd find a picture of these for her, and here they are, only a tiny bit bigger than life-size. Yes, they have pink rhinestones for eyes:
I also bought these "Roxie Gothic" alphabet stamps from the Love, Elsie collection. There are also "Roxie Gothic Dots" stamps, which are the outlined letterforms filled with little polka dots. (Gothic is a misnomer here, though: this isn't what a "gothic" font looks like. Those are very plain and simple, check out "Franklin Gothic" for an example. This is an Old English/Blackletter/Fraktur/German style, with a twist.) There are these bright, jelly colors on the package, but the stamps themselves are clear, the kind made to cling to an acrylic block.
That's all for now. I'll try to get those reviews up soon. And maybe Supply Haul Installment #2, for anyone who's curious.
