Wednesday, October 27, 2010

she's crafty

when i think about myself, i think that i'm very un-domestic. i'm not entirely sure why that is since, according to google, "domesticity = affection for the home and its material comforts." i certainly like being home & i enjoy being comfortable while i'm here. maybe it's just that i don't really like cooking. i do it because i have to and because i like eating, but i have no love for the process the way many folks do. i like living in a clean house, but as we've discussed before, i'm not good at keeping my own house clean. i clean houses for a living & when i get home, i've got no interest in bothering with any more of that cleaning foolishness. i'm good at it though, i think. that's why i make the big bucks.

all right then, i'm not much of a cook & i live in a dirty house, but i'm crafty when it comes to come other things. like, last year in the month before christmas (sometimes known as november) i built a dollhouse for brooke from a kit that came with 9,287 pieces. it was all plain wood in itty bitty little morsels of nothingness. i had no idea when i committed to tackling this project just how incredibly massive it was, but, i got it done & now it's gorgeous, right down to the wall paper & curtains in each room.


i also started making parts of costumes for brooke. most especially, ears. i think i've made 7 pairs so far & brooke wears at least one of them pretty much every single day. at first i was buying supplies to make these things, but then i discovered that it's even more fun to find crap around the house that i can cut up or dismantle & use that to make the costumes. like, i used the waist band of some old black sweats to make brooke a raccoon mask. and i used a ripped up old mouse costume that was dug out of my parents' attic to make some lovely white ears. bits of felt, old pieces of pants that i cut & hemmed, an old outgrown skirt that had a cute pattern, anything's fair game & nothing is sacred.





my latest fun crafty thing is making clothes for stuffed animals. i would love to make doll clothes, but since brooke loathes dolls & i don't often play with them myself anymore, i've had to settle for making clothes for the stuffies in the family. it makes me think back to my childhood & my love for dressing up my cats. and not of the stuffed variety either. nothing was more fun than holding my cat down while i aggressively dressed him in a pretty dress & tied a bonnet tightly around his neck. i was always pleased when he would escape & take off out the front door to streak about the neighborhood because i thought he was showing off his new duds around the 'hood.


here are a couple of my little clothing pieces i've made in the past couple weeks.




i'm kind of partial to making mini skirts right now, but once i get good at them my next task will be to cut up a flag to make a star spangled bikini,


or maybe a dog bustier


or perhaps some butt-out pants.

8 comments:

  1. Oh man, this is fantastic. Is that your real cat?! He looks bewildered and pissed, all at the same time! Not really an easy look to pull off!

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  2. that's hilarious. I remember dressing my cat up, too. and placing him in towers of stuffed animals, forcing my mom to play "where's waldo?" and try to figure out where he was.

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  3. Those are all cute costumes.
    I would have NEVER been able to put that doll house together.
    I too am about the LEAST domestic thing going.

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  4. carrie, that's not my real cat. he must have been too fast to get any photos of him in his pretty clothes. and of course, when i was a child, i didn't have my own digital camera with which to photograph every stupid thing i saw.

    jess, did your cat stay in the pile? i'm surprised my daughter hasn't thought of that yet. our cats get really mad & frantic when we dress them.

    wendy, i'm pretty darn un-domestic too in some ways, but i guess i have my martha stewarty moments. the dollhouse took many days & some friendly assistance to get it done. thank mom for such a big table to work on!

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  5. The Doll House is Beautiful!
    Over 9,000 pieces?
    I would be in AA! LOL

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  6. Love the cat costume! I'm your newest follower.
    Cindy

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  7. I love these! I've wanted to do a dollhouse for a long time, but yours is a little more ambitious than I was thinking about!

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  8. I love the animal costumes! So funny! As for the dollhouse, you did a magnificent job. Believe it or not, I bought that kit about a million years ago at a midnight madness sale before Christmas. Once I opened the box and saw the kajillion pieces, I carefully sealed it back up and still have it down in my basement. Maybe some day. I take my hat off to you.

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don't let me be the only one doing the talking around here. spill your guts!