Twinkle little star

I did it! It took a couple of goes but I crocheted a granny star. And it even looks like the picture in the magazine. Now to bravely attempt changing wool colours, something I have always avoided for some reason... If anyone has any words of encouragement it would be appreciated. Its a bit like jumping off the high dive for the first time when you were a kid. I am sure its not that hard, but I always end up chickening out in the end...

Crochet crazyness

I have finally submitted my report for uni. So now I am free to do whatever I like without feeling guilty about not doing my uni work. This is great, and I have gone completely crochet crazy and have made a granny square tower...

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It seems everywhere I look there is a new crochet challenge. I made a flower last night and although it didn't look like the picture, I am still pretty pleased with it. During my lunch time googling I found some...er... granny hearts?

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I nearly hyperventilated and fell off my swivel chair- I actually have some red wool that I could try making some of these with! Do you know that is the first time ever I have had something in a 'stash' that I could use for some crafty project that takes my eye? These last few months of manically hoarding fabric, wool and buttons has paid off. Although I am still not entirely sure what I will end up doing with the fabric and buttons...

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Then I came across these... er... granny stars? The instructions are in this month's notebook magazine. Although if you aren't that keen on spending $6.95 you could always go to YouTube and get a free video that shows you how to do it (mmm.... monkey see, monkey do...).

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Awesome Sunday

I came across the Book of Awesome while doing a little bit of lunchtime googling. So I was thrilled when I had my own awesome moment this morning- I thought it was monday and was about to haul myself out of bed when I realised it was actually Sunday and I could sleep for as long as I liked- Awesome!

Happy Mother's Day

I can finally post this since it is Mother's Day and mum would have recieved it by now. I spent a couple of evenings in front of the telly stitching this up for her. If anyone is interested in the pattern, you can download it for free from Gazette 94. Its a French blog, but can be translated into English, and there are heaps of free cross stitch designs available.

Happy Mother's Day mum

Almost there...

I only have three more sections to write for my uni report and am so excited that it is nearly finished. And I have only procrastinated a little bit! Yay!

While procrastinating I came across the Dunning and Kruger Effect. Which is pretty much a theory that incompetent people have no idea how incompetent they are, so they believe they are more competent than they really are. The other side of this is that competent people know how competent they are, so they know how much they still have to learn and so are not as full of them selves as incompetent people are. I hope that makes sense.

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Anyway, I thought it fit well with the New Scientist story from a couple of months ago that basically said that people who are competent at their job are promoted to positions where they are perhaps not suited/traind for. They will continue to be promoted until they reach a point where they are completely incompetent at their job and no longer progress.

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Or, from what I have observed call numerous meetings and form many committees to discuss the progress of a project, which in fact delays progress, at which point the committees then have another item to discuss- why there is no progress. I have had the misfortune to be part of some of these meetings and find them completely bewildering. I can only guess that this is how it is for everyone but no one has the guts to say that none of it makes sense. That would be admitting your own incompetence...

She just went mental

What a relief it is Friday. Today was one of those days that people just went mental. I spoke to one lady on the phone and the attached scene from the IT Crowd immediately sprang to mind. All I could think of was Roy saying 'he just went mental', although in my case it was slightly altered to 'she'. Perhaps I expect too much for people not to completely over-react to everything.

Think winner

I have finally made some progress on my uni report and I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was feeling so happy with what I have achieved I wanted to include a picture that shows just how great I feel about getting a big chunk of my report out of the way. So I googled 'champion' to see if I could find some inspiring picture, possibly of someone winning a race or something. What I did find was this champion lamb...

Unfortunately the poor thing is having its head twisted off by its owner. Perhaps winning isn't always enough...

Fabric and buttons

It feels as though I fell off the edge of the world last week. I happily spent the whole time away from the computer. Now I am back and trawling through heaps of emails. Don't get me wrong, I am not hugely popular with thousands of emails from friends or anything. No, I subscribe to a ridiculous amount of junk email newsletters. I still have no idea how I ended up subscribing to Scrapbook USA! but they do provide me with plenty of ideas of what to do with scraps of paper and buttons.

While I was in the 'off-line' world (which is full of interesting things and some very strange people... or perhaps that was just what happens to people in Spotlight when they are having a 25% off everything sale... but that is a whole other story), I was able to visit Darwin's only quilting shop.

Wow, it was like when I was 5 and my dad would take me to Toy World. Adult Soraya sitting on one of my shoulders was patiently telling me to take slow calm breaths, while Child Soraya on my other shoulder wanted to run up and down the isles squealing and touching everything (she also wanted an ice cream and a pony, but we cant have everything). In the end I bought some fabric to add to my 'stash' (every quilting magazine I read refers to an elusive stash of fancy off cuts to make cute little things out of- at which point Child Soraya throws herself on the floor in a fit of 'wahhhhh but I don't have a stash' type whining. Adult Soraya gets quite embarrassed by this and pretends not to know Child Soraya) and some buttons (damn Scrapbook USA!'s influence there).



Now all I have to do is finish my horrible uni report and I am free to make all kinds of things from my long list of crafty things to do...


*P.s. Also stumbled across a great blog for writing inspiration. Although I haven't had much of a chance to write anything lately I will have a go at some of the tips shared by Sandy Ackers. Perhaps I will be able to pole vault over the quicksand of my obsessive procastinative disorder to actually get my report written. Hmmm, is that something shiny?...