Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Random updates, thanks and a cardboard shoutout


Hey, everyone!

Behold today's weather:
It's actually a heat wave compared to a couple of days ago when it was minus 4 or 7 or some other vile number. However, I am not as melancholic as one might think, moving here to the frozen tundra after having lived so much of my life on a delightful tropical island. There's actually sunshine today! Sun, I can do. The cold doesn't matter on sunny days. On the interminable grey days , however, when the sky threatens to precipitate something awful down on us, I might feel a little blue. Then I go swimming. Or bond with my nutella jar (empty, so must buy more). Or think positive thoughts. You know, desperate ones, like, "Oh, hey! Grey-as-a-corpse-in-a-shroud Slightly overcast days are perfect for outdoor photography! Let's bundle up in 37 layers, strap space heaters on my feet, shovel the snow off my doorstep and squat, hunched over some disembodied bag innard in plain view of whichever daft neighbors are actually out walking their pet alaskan husky/polar bear/emperor penguin!"

Forgive my winter grousing, friends. I'm sooooooo ready for Spring and Summer and glorious outdoor swimming and shorts and tanned limbs again. But then I think of the homeless people here who don't even have a snow-encrusted doorstep and I am grateful. 

Anyway, today's post isn't about the weather and me missing being an island girl. I want to share some completely unrelated things.

First is a lovely video by Amber, showing how she makes a cardboard toolbox. We don't often get to see a cardboard master in live action so I had to invite you all to go watch her at work. Amber blogs at The Cardboard Collective

I covet her cardboard tools. I just hack away at my cardboard stash with an NT cutter, a saw and my kitchen scissors. So crude. She, however, has the real stuff. 

Next is just some housekeeping of the old blog. I am very thrilled at the response to the Make A Bag series that's now going on on ikatbag. It seems people are actually not falling into comas from all the information in the posts! Thank you for your comments, encouragement and feedback. Thank you also to the many bloggers who've shouted out on their sites about this series.   We're only about a third way through - there are another 10 chapters to go, most of them shorter than these first few. I hope we all have the stamina to make it to the end!

To help people find the posts in the series, here are two ways:

First, you can click on the Make A Bag category in my sidebar. It should pull up all posts in that series. 



Or you can click on the Make A Bag image also in the sidebar. Right now it links to all posts with the Make A Bag label but when the series is finished, I will link it instead to the summary post, from which all other posts will be linked. 

We have a kid sick this week. And my house is overrun with storage tubs (13, at last count) of baby clothes from when Emily (now in 2nd grade) was a baby. A severe attack of sentimentalitis rendered me incapable of giving away any of her babyphernalia, or those from Jenna and Kate, the result of which is my now paying for it in the form of a massive clothing sorting-cum-exodus. Fun!

As if. 
Is it any wonder that I'm writing an entire bag-making curriculum to procrastinate?
  

10 comments:

  1. The bright sun disguising the bitter cold is a bit disconcerting! I'm loving the how to- series. Rather like the teach a man to fish idea, you are teaching us how to make any bag, not just one bag! I was just given a bunch of home-dec weight fabric, and will need to make things with it before too long.

    I think Amber is using a tin snips for the banana box! That little tote is too cute.

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  2. I'd love to have ONE, only ONE cold week during the year... Cancun is Summer year long.
    Hope your child gets well.

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  3. I absolutely LOVE the make a bag series! I have been making my own bags for a while now, and I am enjoying learning your new tips and tricks to make some processes easier. I actually am keeping each post in a word document so that I can have my own personal reference material when I am stuck! Good luck with the weather... it is COLD here too. UGH.

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  4. I should start by just saying--I've been reading your blog for years. So when I walked into our local children's museum the other day and saw their "Holidays Unboxed" cardboard and tape exhibit, you immediately came to mind. It was amazing--they'd built a whole cardboard city/maze thing, and a giant spider-sac-looking-structure out of the tape. Not to mention all the cardboard costumes all the workers were walking around in, the amazing decorations, and the cardboard crafts they had available for the kids. The kids were in heaven. Inspires me to try to do a little more of what you do. Keep up the great work. :) (You can view the exhibit in the video at the bottom of this page: http://www.cdm.org/unboxed. So cool.)

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  5. Over here on the other side of the globe (in Sydney, Australia), we are having heat waves and 'catastophic' fire danger days.. Those days I would rather the cold!

    You should make a memory quilt with your absolute favourite baby clothes :) (Just another reason to procrastinate!)

    I found it very difficult to get rid of the baby clothes too so I understand the storage tub issue, but somehow I did it. I kept my absolute favourites, but they dont take too much room. :)

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  6. Thank you so much for the laugh today! I really needed it! It isn't as cold here in Va. but we still have a few inches of snow on the ground and not much sun. I have an active imagination so when the SAD gets too bad and there is sun, I get in a warm room in front of a sunny window, close my eyes, raise my face to the sun and pretend the cold, snow, and drabness is not there. Works well enough for a little boost.
    The 10-more-chapters is exciting to me. Does that make me weird?? Don't even care! I don't have sunshine today so I will substitute my bright glowing computer screen and soak up the how-to's!

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  7. I forgot to say.......I really hope your little girl gets better very soon and the rest of the family doesn't get sick.

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  8. Thanks for the shout out and loving the bag series! LiEr, when will you write a book for goodness sakes? We need this thoroughness on our bookshelves.

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  9. LiEr, you are the only person I know who can make me laugh while describing gloomy grey weather. Thank you for that!

    We've had a sick week here as well. I've been sewing a shopping cart cover, and bags look more attractive by the second. Cuter, too. But I have a slight obsession with the shopping cart cover after stomach bug, strep, and various colds so far this winter. And a baby who eats everything. Two seams to hand-stitch shut and it will be finished. DH says I should blog it. The post may be titled "DIY shopping cover - or, why to just buy one". I'm sure you would have made a very elegant one without any of my drama...

    I am so very grateful for your bag series. Someday I will put it to use, hopefully soon.

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  10. Ah yes - the baby clothes. We are moving house next week and I have been agonising over giving away the old baby clothes. My youngest is 5 so I have a couple of boxes of sentimentals, but the rest has to go...along with my stash of cardboard. Weep weep. Don't know which I felt worse about...the baby clothes (what if I have another child?) or the cardboard (that is a really cool cardboard roll wonder where I would find another like that?)... ; )

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