See Jenn Craft

I’m off to Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Venice, Rome, Barcelona, and Fuerteventura.   Yeah, I know.   A little jealousy is normal in this situation, just try not to let it eat you alive.

When I get back, Joe leaves, so theoretically there could be tons of crafting to post about.  With nobody to hang out with in the evenings, I could become a knitting machine!  I could paint the huge glass balcony doors!  I could finally do that Jonas painting for his room!  I could make quilts for everyone, alter all my “I bought this because it was on clearance, but it doesn’t actually fit me” clothes, make dresses for the Twink, and reorganize all my crafting supplies.

(Probably what will actually happen is I’ll be ranting a lot on my other blog about how difficult life is as a single parent to two terrorists.  Who has energy for crafting after 14 hours of saying NO and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PUT YOUR BROTHER DOWN!  So if this place becomes just a memory, that’s where you can find me.)

Ciao for now!

Well hello there, 47,000 strangers.  Who knew that coming out of the Craftster closet would have this effect on my blog.  Two days ago I got 4 views.  Now I’m a “hot new project”, a “fastest growing blog”, and have had my stuff posted in a foreign language.   (We tried to translate that, the best we could do was

Great window car park , car park even if to him …. ……  possibility lady …… sea ……. paint. ……  much even if beautiful ripe. Look at ……, here and here.

which is killing us.  If anyone speaks Turkish and wants to fill in the blanks (or explain the car park thing), feel free to help out. )

For those of you who have been reading this from the beginning because you are related to me or just love me (all four of you) and don’t know what Craftster is.. check it out.  It’s over there on my blogroll under “places that get me into trouble.”  Go.  Get into some trouble of your own.

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Now - back to our regularly scheduled blogging. (AKA - Jenn’s faux-modest bragging.)

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Wait - there’s a method to my madness..

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I know, I know.  You are (quite correctly) saying “Hey!  We’ve seen this!”  But have you?  Have you seen the actual finished product?  I don’t think you have!  Because those thin stripes down the sides (and across the top, not that I can actually capture them with the camera) were not painted until last night.  They’ve been sitting there, unfinished, causing me no little amount of pain and anguish (mostly because they were a very easy target and Joe gave me an endless amount of crap for leaving the window undone for so long.)  Now that I’m actually done with the ocean scene, and knew I had some blue (as opposed to thinking “If I paint these borders blue, then run out while attempting to finish the underwater paradise, I’m going to have to throw myself  into Vesuvius.”), I could finish them up.  And I think they really make the window.  It looks so… serious now.  Complete.  Done.  Like it’s supposed to look like that.  Like “What?  You don’t have crazy rainbow circles on your windows?”  I love it.

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I swear, I am not just recycling these images from the old post.  They are brand new.  Look!  You can almost see the top border in this one!  I swear, it exists.  Sure, both the sides and top only exist because I’m too lousy at math to take up the entire window space with the exact number of the exact right size circles, but whatever!  They look great!

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Also, with my newfound internet rockstar-ness comes helpful readers.  Margarete writes in to let me know the German word for this style of stained (fused?) glass is Butzenglas or butzenscheiben, to help me  be a more effective Googler.  And look!  It works!  Butzensheiben! Butzenglas!  See?  I’m not just making this stuff up!  (Of course, now that I’m able to Google this I see that most of it looks like that second example - where the rows of circles are staggered to reduce the negative space to little triangles and I like that look SO MUCH BETTER it’s KILLING ME.  Joe has already started the “Huh.  I guess you’ll just have to peel it all up and start again now.” campaign (just his latest effort to drive me crazy.  One day it will work and then where will he be?  Dead, that’s where.)

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Madam is all ready for me to paint her (organized, not crazy) window now.  I, however, feel like I need a break from Gallery Glass fumes.  We’ll be driving up to Venice next week, so it’s time to start figuring out what knitting to bring.  Maybe she’ll finally get that little wrap sweater for ballet (just in time for summer!)

So, for all you newbies - hi.  Welcome.  Come again.  I’ll try to post more than once a month (stop laughing, Mom.)  To all (four of) you regulars - don’t worry. They’ll be gone soon, and it’ll be back to procrastination and never finishing projects.

You feel that?  That’s a smug sense of accomplishment.  I’m blasting it out over the internet, straight into your homes.  Yes, folks, after a measly 2 1/2 months (oye), Jonas’s window is done, done, DONE!

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It casts this crazily beautiful and peaceful blue light all over the room.  I was trying to get it here, but it seems impossible to capture with the camera.  Trust me - it’s like a color-therapy room in a spa.  Whether it has the power to calm my little Terrorist… well, I won’t hold my breath on that one.

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I love it.  I mean, I really, really love it.  Sure, there are some parts I hate.  There are always some parts I hate of everything I make.  The thing that I hate about this window are the fish that are so pale they look white.  Particularly the big one right above the octopus.

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Yeah, I’m talking to you.  You freaky albino freak.

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My original plan was for all the fish to be orange, red, and bright yellow.  Then I painted the stars and octopus and thought there was too much orange, red, and bright yellow already on there.  So I used those blah pastels.  Now, with the the water all filled in, I see that any measly amounts of warm colors are completely overwhelmed anyway.  There is definitely not too much orange on this thing.  Next time I do a big, complicated one like this I will have to remember to paint the background FIRST.  It makes such a difference in how the other color choices work (or don’t.)

Also - that fish looked yellow before the blue went on, I swear.  Now it looks white.  Annoying.

This is a lot of ranting, when overall I’m extremely pleased.  More pictures of my lovely -

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Love the way the tentacles look against the blue water.

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I no longer have any anger towards either of the turtles.  Once the background got painted, they both look great.  Too bad I can’t say the same for that sickly fish…

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Still the best part.  I experimented with using the clear to add texture after I had already painted with a color (look at the blue eyes - see the swirls?)  I love it.  I may have to go back and texturize the entire thing.  (Spell check is telling me that texturize isn’t a word.  I can use texturing or moisturize.  But I have faith that you guys know what I mean.)

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Two windows down, one to go.  Next up is Violet Jayne’s “Organized window.  Like the living room. Not all crazy like Jonas’s.”  Hmph.  Turns out she’s Joe’s kid after all.

The window is slogging along, I haven’t picked up my knitting in months (I have given store-bought baby gifts to 4 babies in the past 5 months. Shameful.), I still have not even started sketches for the Jonas sign for his room, the fabric I bought to make him a quilt is folded up and laying on the floor of my room, and when I went looking for binding for it I discovered the still pinned-together quilt top that I was making for Violet when she was still in the crib.  (So THAT’S where all my pins went!)

It was time for a 30 minute project.  Something I could start and finish while the kids watched Blue’s Clues.  Something to give the crafting mojo a boost.  And, hey - if it solved the “I’m meeting people for lunch in an hour and have nothing to wear” problem, too?  All the better.

I bought this dress because I liked the neckline and the colors.  Also, because I am physically incapable of passing up just about anything in my size that’s marked down to four bucks.

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Pardon the mess behind me.  Joe is trying this new thing where he doesn’t harass me about my mess.  I think he thinks that his silent disgust will get me to clean it up.  He should talk to my mom - it never worked for her, either.

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Unfortunately it was way, way to short to actually wear as a dress (while I’m thrilled you can’t actually see my undies in this picture, trust me when I tell you things would be different if I was bending down to pick up a squalling two-year-old.) It also looked weird over jeans at this length.  And it had these huge pockets that, while nice in theory, got really wrinkled and bunched up when it was washed, and then made my hips stick out an extra 2 inches on each side (and really, who needs that?)  I considered ironing them for about 3 seconds, then remembered that I have no idea where the iron actually *is*, and just decided they had to go.

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I thought these pictures were coming out blurry, then I looked at them FULL sized on my GIANT screen and discovered the truth - my mirror is really, really streaky.

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The pockets took me the longest because I’m not that smart.  All I did was chop off a few inches, hem, cut out the pockets, sew them shut - voila!  A tank I will actually wear.  Like 3 times already since Thursday! :)  Joe came home, saw the sewing machine  out (What?  You thought sometime between first thing in the morning and dinnertime I would have put it away?  It’s like you didn’t even see that picture of my bedroom floor.), and said “Ooh!  The sewing machine is out!  That’s a good sign!  What did you make?” and I gestured to myself and he looks at me and says “Oh - was that that ugly dress?”  Nice.

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I have been painting this window all weekend.  Sewing that top got me back in business…

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This isn’t exactly what the colors look like.  Next time I take pics I’ll try to do it earlier in the day.

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I’m actually further along at this point. If all goes well tomorrow (RE:  Two little terrorists get over the MommyMommyMommy thing they’ve been going through this weekend) I could be done and moving onto the next one.  Woo hoo!  (It occurs to me that this blog means I’ll know exactly when I start a project and how long it actually takes me to see it through to the end.  Hmm.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.)