Crafts @ MindSay

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Soooo...
Naturally, I had to wake up reasonably early today to go into college and collect the shitty envelope.

As it often goes... We have the good, the bad and the ugly.
But mine is the reasonable, the shit and the unexpected.

The shit of course, is my English Language.
Go and fuck yourself AQA - you pile of wank with your dodgy as fuck exam papers and your shitty coursework.

Put it this way, if I'd gotten a D - I'd be deleting all of my writing and never writing another sentence. As far as I'm aware, DATWBSVOH, TFATH, #1263 and the rest of them are still in their folder.
You are supposed to get two grades lower than your GCSE results.
So I was supposed to drop from my sexy A* to a B - BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

The reasonable is my Photography.
I expected a C - I got one. No harm done.

But it's hilarious - I was the 4th highest in the group for sketchbook marks.
PAUL'S SKETCHBOOK MARKS - hence the reason everyone's got a shock today, he marked them all wrong.

Michelle was first, Ash was second, Shelly was third and I was fourth.
Exam results determined that...

I came first! :D
I BEAT ASH. I BEAT ASH, I BEAT ASH, I BEAT AAAAAASSSSSHHH!!!
Mwah ha ha, that's all I wanted to do. :D

I beat her by seven marks. We both got C - which is alright. :)
But the real shock came when Michelle got a D and Shelly got a fucking E!
I knew Paul's marking was fucked but I hadn't realised HOW fucked.


And now for the unexpected.
Going with the 'drop-two-grades' theory - I should have gotten a B for Media Studies.
Nah. I didn't do that.
GOT A FUCKING A INSTEAD. LMFAO.

Well, my coursework was totally epic and the exam was a pile of piss.
Lewis and Ash both got the same grade for coursework. :D
We all got Bs for the coursework and As for the exam - which just goes to show, I wasn't the only one who pissed all over it. Take THAT, AQA!

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I'd barely had my results in my hand for a second when mam had taken them off me and Sarah had swooped over, asking how I'd done.
To which I simply responded: "I don't know, I've only looked at them for A SECOND."
Sarah was pleased with me - she even said that if I carry on the same standard at A2, I could end up with an A*. Sounds alright, but will it be possible?

I passed Dianne on the way out too. She was more pleased with me than my mam was...
And as I was leaving, I had the voice in the head that was saying: "OMG, DIANNE JUST SAW YOUR MAM."

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On the way home, we stopped off at Hairwaves.
Debbie was outside having a cigarette. She was more pleased with my results than my mam was as well.
Of course, I pulled my modest face. Well, it was sort of modest - sort of embarrassed at how shit my fucking English grade was.

I got my eyebrows waxed. :)
It was weird this time, I actually had it done in the upstairs room, laid on this random bed with some weird arse piano concerto coupled with ocean sounds playing in the background.

I've discovered that apparently I have beasty follicles - which apparently makes waxing my eyebrows hurt a lot more than it'd hurt anyone else.
But it proper DOESN'T hurt. :/

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When we got home, I played Super Smash Bros.
I managed to finish the single-player mode with Samus, along with finishing one or two of the shitty bonus levels - with thanks to video tutorials on YouTube. :)

Mam came up, she'd been out and bought me a reward for my results, along with a card that was addressed to "MEDIA GENIUS".
Inside it said: "We are VERY VERY VERY proud of you" - I wonder if she means that. I'm pondering, is mam like me? Is she far better in words than she is in speech?

Either way, she gave me cards to give to Shelly and Ash too.
I rang Ash not long after I'd gotten home - her mam is proper buzzing off the walls.
And she's gotten her place at university - good on her. :D

But back to the point, this is the arrangement of stuff that I pulled out of the bag she presented me:



Modelling clay and Haribo Maom! :D
It's a very colourful collection of stuff.

So naturally, I started making things, as I listened to Rammstein and ate chews. :)
All I have to do is look around my room and there's endless characters jumping out at me.
There's Link, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, various Pokémon, various Simpsons characters, Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Cortex and several Happy Tree Friends characters.

So of course, I can't decide who to make first!
I've made three today:



There's Pikachu - my first. :D



Made on request by mam - Psyduck.
When I asked who I should make next, she said "that orange duck who always had a headache" :)
There's the figure to compare it too, but I think I made him a bit TOO orange...



And straying away from the Pokémon theme - Homer Simpson. :)
He was proper staring at me from my collection of action figures on top of the bookshelf, so I made him too. :)

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I went downstairs after this and watched telly with mam for a bit.
We watched Come Dine With Me and Roar.

Then I persuaded her to come play on the Wii with me.
We started out playing Wii Play - but she got fed up with me winning dramatically every time, so we swapped to Guitar Hero.

Now this persuasion worked a little TOO well - we were playing from 4PM till 7:30PM. :)

We started out on Expert-Guitar, Easy-Bass combination, but then mam wanted to go on vocals.
So I swapped to drums - so then we had Medium-Drums, Easy-Vocals combination.

We went through all the songs on GH: Greatest Hits that she knew, then we switched to GH: World Tour to play more.
In all, we must've played over 40 songs in total.
Fucking hilarious at some parts though, mam's freestyles were just EPIC.

"I don't want to freeeeeeestyle, coz it's embarraaaaaaassing... But I get points, soooooo...!!!"

We had to keep pausing the game though, because people kept ringing us both to see how I'd done in my exams. We had nana, Ian, Paul and even Tracey had congratulated me over Facebook.
But of course, dad didn't even ring me up. This gave mam something else to moan at him about, but...
At the same time, this upset me. He was even in my room at one point - the two cards for Ash and Shelly, along with my results slip was ON THE DESK. He put them on the bed without even glancing at them or sparing a thought. :(

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Then I ate chicken legs and chicken noodles. A mint combination. :)
I watched How Clean Is Your House? with mam, then this random documentary about this woman who tried to smuggle cocaine through Cuba.

At 11, I spoke to Shelly on the phone for an hour.
It was a conversation with mixed emotions.
I had my occasional shout at her when she started being stupid, talking about how she's starving herself to get to a size 14.
Seriously, if she ends up thinner than me, I'll feel so fucking self-concious.
I'd never have sex with someone if they were smaller than me. Bigger is fine and the same size is fine too.
I don't care how fat someone is, as long as they love me for who I am.

But if they were thinner than me, I'd utterly refuse to be naked with them. :(

Our 5 fables for the week were :

1. The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg ~ We made a goose atop a glittery-golden egg!
2. The Lion and the Mouse ~ We made a pink & purple mouse with a piece of the rope in it's mouth.
3. The Ants and the Grasshopper (one of my personal fav's)~ We made an ear of corn mosaic ... to represent our "preparedness."
4. The Tortoise and the Hare ~ We made an intricate "hat" with rabbit ears on one end and a tortoise head & feet on the other. The children have the choice which side they will put forward! (clever, hmmm?)
5. The Boy Who Cried "Wolf!" (my all time fav Aesop's)~ We painted a grey wolf. (Kind of anti-climactic as a craft, but ... it's Friday!)

Next week ... Our Five Most Favorite Songs! Woot!!!

YEAH! Finally!
After being married for 27 years and for the past 15 or so years begging for it, I'm getting my Laundry/sewing/mudroom built!!!
I'm so excited! My washer and dryer have always been in my kitchen since we built the house in 1980/81. I have never liked that! Now they will be moved to my new room! We took the existing deck and are turning it into my room. It will be huge! 12'x12'! Lots of room! Sewing machine will go in there, washer, dryer and a new laundry sink! Yeah! And I have a huge walk in closet designed for the room for craft storage and such. 3 windows and a new door with a canopy roof over the doorway entrance. Before our son left for college, James took the deck railing down and sawed off the posts.This past Friday he added wood to the existing deck sides and put the floor down. This past Saturday James went under the deck and built 3 reinforcement walls with block and 4'x6'x16' beams.One on each end and one directly in the middle. Under the deck gets very shallow up near the driveway, so he was under there crawling around on his belly and back all day. I was too, helping whenever he needed it. He looked like a pig by the end of the day! LOL   All muddy and nasty!
Then Wednesday, yesterday he framed out the first wall and got it up. Today, he and his brother got the rest of  the walls  framed out. Tomorrow the roof framework goes up cause Paul can help James tomorrow all day, so James took off from work. I am taking pictures as it goes along. I wish we had done that with our house as it was being built. We built it ourselves back then only getting someone else to do fireplace,wiring and plumbing. We built our house for $22,000 back in 80-81!  That in today's numbers would probably be quadrupled!         Here's the first picture:sides added and floor down.                                                                                         This is a picture of the support beams added in. Here's two of them.
Here is the third added support beam.
Should have showed a before picture! LOL It was just a deck with a rail and now all railing is up around my deck off our bedroom. Moved the table,chairs, and umbrella to the very back deck with the grill. James will put a rail up for me around it this Spring so I can hang all my hanging baskets of flowers from it like I did on the upper deck.
This picture shows the deck off our bedroom with the new rail from the old deck!

My whicker chair pictured on the far left was chewed up by my daughter's dog! A Siberian Husky! She is still a puppy and she has shredded a lot of my things! She started chewing the siding off the house so we moved her away from the house now! My chair looks horrible doesn't it?! Bad dog.....
Another picture of our deck from below:
We bought this canopy a couple weeks ago and put it up there. it helps keep it cool and now its my favorite place to snuggle up and read a book.
Here's James adding the framework of the first wall!
and here's the first wall framed out:
 
Here's today's pictures of all the walls framed out:

another one:
 
and yet another:

Tomorrow I will post the roof pictures and whatever else they get done!
I'm so excited!

So I finished my Amy Butler Sophia Carry-All bag. It wasn't as tough as I expected it to be. The worst part was drawing and cutting all of the pieces and layers and layers of interfacing. But once that was done, construction was relatively easy. As per web reviews, I used a denim needle on my machine and it worked very nicely.

As for the piping I went ahead and bought pre-made piping, since that was just easier. Once I discovered my zipper foot, it went it in quite well. I wanted to install purse feet on the bottom, but they were all out at G-Street and I didn't feel like waiting to order them online.

The only other modification I made to the pattern was extending the straps by a few inches for a longer drop, and making the pockets in thirds so that there are 3 on each side rather than 2. This way they perfectly fit my wallet, PDA, phone, and work ID.



Looks a bit like a watermelon I suppose...

My next version of this bag is for my friend Becks - I've imagined a denim version of the bag with a baseball print lining, and she'll provide the curly W patch for the outside. It will be the perfect bag for her to take to Nats games! I'm most excited!

I ran out to the fabric store to get interfacing for the Sophia bag, and found flannel Disney fabric for Cars and Toy Story - the kid's two most favorite movies. So I bought some and figured I'd make him some pajama pants.

Once he saw them, he was super-excited, and made the decision that he wanted one leg of each rather than one pair the same.

In order to tell the front from the back, he suggested that we put in a tag, so there is a small green fleece "tag" in each. They are a little long, but he'll grow into them.

Super easy pattern. I think cutting and marking the pieces took longer than sewing them together.

PS:  You can also see he's standing on the completed guitar quilt.