Sherleeeee Werleeeeee

This is Shirley.


Shirley is brilliant. I work with her at the Arts Council. She brings in biscuits and Vimp-toe and makes me laugh and looks after me. In return I am a grumpy sod. No wait, I brew up every half hour, so I bring the tea. Anyway, Shirley is ace and I love her. And I made a Shirleymonster.


Hiya!

Shirley loves beads and sequins and sparkle, and she is a bit of a sparkly character herself, so I decided to make the whole monster out of glittery yarn. Then I went a bit bonkers with the old sequins. It's totally blingin and that. It captures her very ESSENCE, I feel. I could only have made it more Shirleyish by putting a voice recording in it.



Here is human Shirley with monster Shirley outside work in the sun today. Not a terribly exact likeness here, because I picked the ONE day she isn't wearing any jewellery or spangle at all, and also DAMN YOU PHOTOCHROMIC LENSES ( I googled that). However it was sunny so that was nice.


I gots to go now, I am so blimmin' busy! By that I mean I am going to be a good citizen and fill my census form in. Buh bye now, take care, mind the roads!

Oh this again.

Hellooo, it's me. I feel a bit sick because I think I accidentally ate some milky sandwiches today, euurgh, yuck. They probably only had a bit of milk in them, but maybe I shouldna oughtna had five. Oh who cares.

Anyway I have been a busy bumblebee the last couple of weeks, when I'm not ingesting milk by mistake, and my knitted drawing is NEARING COMPLETION! Can you believe it. It has been over a year since I started it. I now have six squares to go. Yeahhhh! It looks pretty good, but I'm not going to show you it yet because it's so nearly finished that if I show you now, you'll be all like, yawn, whatevers, SEEN IT, when I finally unveil the finished product. And I do not want that, I want gasps of disbelief and gratitude, you know? So I'm going old school and showing you some very bad photos of some individual squareses.

Here:





This one is upside down.




Oh I wanted to show you this, some of the squares have so many different strands in that the back ends up looking like this:

Aaargh. I spend twenty minutes of every hour untangling it. It is Massively Laborious. But satisfying.

I am going to make a cup of tea now, so, bye bye.

Workshop fun YES MORE

So not to go on and on about it, but I did a crochet workshop at Beetlefelt this Saturday, you guys. Did you know that? I may have mentioned it in passing.

Anyway Carol very kindly sent me some more photos from it, that she took covertly while we were busy as beavers. I am in some of them! Treat!

Eee ar (as they say round here)























These are all in the wrong order now, I was trying to be clever and did it wrong anyway. Oh well, you get the general idea. Bye for now, I think my hair needs doing by the looks of it.

Edit: Ooh and I wanted to say thanks to the ladies who came along, they are all very lovely. Ta ducks.

Crochet workshop second go

Yesterday I did my second EVER workshop at Beetlefelt in Chorlton, so I just thought I'd pop by and tell you about it, okay? This time the workshop was fully booked, so I had a small breakdown and nearly didn't manage to go at all, but it was fine and everyone was super and made me feel happy. We crocheted madly for three hours. Everyone was well clever and now has a granny square to keep half of one foot warm, unless they actually LIKED doing it, in which case they might make some more! Who knows!

Anyway I took a few photos, they're here look.



Hard at work.







Here's one of everyone with their finished square! I am so proud *sniff*.



It's funny, well not really funny, but anyway, I get so stressed about doing things like this that my mind turns into treacle and I can't concentrate on anything for ages beforehand. Thats not funny at all. But if I'm brave and do the scary thing, it usually turns out okay. I actually really enjoyed doing this yesterday, which is something I need to remember for next time instead of getting all flustered and wanting to crawl down the nearest drain and hide there until it goes away. Silly Helen!

I have just noticed that I made ONE measly post in January, so I'm going to attempt to update a little bit more in future. I'm sure you will be delighted about this. Well you'd better be, because have I got some WICKED stuff to show you! But not yet. If you're good. TTFN

Me and my dawg. I mean monster.

Aw reet. Hey, you know what? Since Christmas I've been a total loser and lost the ability to do ANY work whatsoever. I am trying to get back into the swing of things, but not doing a terribly good job.

Tell you what I have done though. I made a monster version of ME.

A ha haha!



I just came round to Valpuri's to persuade her to take some photos of me with the monster for We Are Your Friends, and am now struggling to operate a Mac while she washes some pots. S'all go.

Here I am messing about in the front yard.







How lovely! I forgot to put any make up on this morning and I could also do with a fringe trim, I think. But I like them I do.

Partly because I am so badly organised at the moment, and partly because I have started to go insane, I am going on hiatus from the knitting for a little while. I really want to get my knitted drawing finished soon, it glares at me all the time from the bottom of a plastic box in my room. Also I have started to feel an overwhelming urge to get back to basics, to do some actual drawing, with pencils and pens and shit, which I have been neglecting of late. I will continue to update this blog with whatever nonsense comes into my head, like usual, but I want to do some fun stuff for no reason, let some ideas surface, and calm the hell down.

And apart from all that, I really like the word 'hiatus'. I'll let you know how it goes! Ooh how delightful.

Stuff I Made Previously

Hey guys. Merry Christmastime, happy new year for tomorrow, whoop. Now it's past Christmas I suppose I can show you some of the monsters I made ages ago. Here they are:


















This was a commission for Ruth, who wanted a family of monsters for her real family. I had a great time making these, and I wish I could have seen everyone opening their presents on Christmas day and seeing themselves! There is one missing actually, and I don't know who, because I finished them ages ago. Oh dear, never mind. Rest assured that it was amazing.

Then I made this monster for Alice. She is a beaut with super red hair and loads of sparkle.



Well, time is ticking and I am being slow. Time to make like a tree, and grow for hundreds of years before being chopped down for timber. I mean, I need to go. Happy new year everyone! Hope 2011 brings everything you ever dreamed and more, okay bye.

We All Match

Hello. Hey, look at this. I think this is one of the best pictures I've ever been in. Don't the tops of our heads look ace? You can tell we all approve, because we are sticking our thumbs up. We are special.



I'm going to Garth's in an hour so I will endeavour to take a picture of him in HIS hat, which is a complete masterpiece of a topper.

For some reason I decided to look up synonyms for the word 'hat' then (something remaining from GCSE English, not using the same word twice in a sentence) and 'topper' was my favourite! Synonym.com helpfully gave me: 'wear, put on, get into, don, assume, supply, provide, render, furnish.' Right, thanks.

Anyway I have things to be making, for these craft fairs I'm doing at the weekend. I don't know if I've ever mentioned them! This is one. SATURDAY, guys. And here is the other one. That's SUNDAY, you know.

Erk. Right, back to the tangled mess. Byeeeeeee