Tag Archives: t-shirts

December 10, 2014 · 6:00 AM

Search me

I write this blog primarily as a record of things I do with my hands and a few notable (to me) life things. I used to keep a written journal, but stopped over a decade ago. I sort of keep sketchbooks and “idea” books, but only sporadically and they’re often hard to decipher. So the blog format does in its metadata what I don’t tend to do in life – keep track of dates and things in general in an orderly fashion – and has neat writing and doesn’t require anything sticky for pictures. So I really don’t care about having ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ tens of followers (although sponsorship and getting free shit would be nice, though I also find that annoying) and I don’t pay much attention to the statistics, however I’m finding some of the search terms people have used and (sometimes unfortunately) ended up here fascinating and/or amusing. The bulk of them are practical – people looking up patterns, ideas for recycling fabrics, and people and places I’ve mentioned, but a few stick out.

So I will try to give you what you were really looking for, answer your questions, or encourage you to come back to clarify, in honor of my blogiversary.

Though the web has gotten so vast that you no longer need professionals and masters degrees (like mine) to make an optimal query in a search engine (and I’m also guilty of occasionally just typing in short questions) some people are taking it a bit too far:

WHAT ADJUSTMENTS DO I NEED TO MAKE A HONEYCOWL OUT OF SOCKWEIGHT YARN

Um, if you know the Honeycowl, then you probably use ravelry, so get off Google and use their awesome search features to see how others did it, fool.

And of course for the dirtier of mind, I’m sure plenty experience disappointment in landing here – some terms are just dull, others I may intentionally use just for shits and giggles, like:

COCK SOCKS

Which no, I’ll not quite give you that, but enjoy the Red Hot Chili Peppers instead.

Another searched for:

SOCK MONKEY LUDE PICS

And I’ll happily oblige, that is if you really meant “lewd”… otherwise I do not know what a sock monkey would pop to chill out.

(I was too lazy or mildly creeped out to stage this in a more sexy setting…)

And one of my favorites:

DUSTY OLD THINGS

This might be the pass-phrase to my heart. And hopefully you’ve been back recently to take in my post about the dusty old things I recently found.

And an obsession with gender-appropriateness in which I do not understand:

DOES WEARING A POLYESTER SCARF MAKE ME LOOK GAY

Yes, if it is rainbow colored (but even then you could just be a supporter of gay rights). Otherwise you just look cheap and a supporter of petrochemicals and possibly slave labor.

MAN WEARING BAKTUS

Here’s a man in a baktus (and a lacy one to boot):

And one that I searched for myself:

BAD HAT QUILT

Not sure what this could mean – a quilt made of bad/ugly hats? Badly knitted hats? Then that would be an afghan of sorts… Or a tiny quilt to cover a bad hat? Or a tiny quilt to tuck in the unloved hat at night? Or by bad do you mean good?

And some mild WTFs:

SLIMY GREEN SNOT WORM

You should probably get that checked out, or if you are a child, get away from the screen and go outside to play.

BEER BOX QUILT

A quilt made from beer boxes? Are you a hobo?

UNEMPLOYMENT PAINTINGS

Yeah, aren’t those most paintings?

HOW TO DRESS A ROOM WITH SANDED FLOOR

One sleeve (curtain) at a time, or a little oil and vinegar.

IN WHICH FINGER SHOULD JADEITE BE WORN

Whoa, are you planning to surgically bejewel yourself?

SOCK FOOT MAN TUCK

I don’t know if this is supposed to be dirty or if it’s an inquiry about taking in now baggy socks after significant weight loss…

FLOOR SANDER TSHIRTS

Do you mean the best t-shirts to use as rags while sanding the floor? Or the logo of sanding machine? Or do you want to buy one?

If so, here are three from which you may choose that I made just for you!

Check out my redbubble shop for more ASTITCHMATISM swag including veggie weenie totes and phone cases – not sure how long I’ll have it up, so get stuff now!

I STILL HAVE JET LAG

I’m sorry, that really sucks, but at least you got home with all fingers intact and the luxury of leisure time or a tolerant boss who hasn’t fired your slacking-off ass yet.

CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE TO HEXAGON FLOOR TILE

Hex tile (not the fancy-pants marble or 100% authentic reproduction stuff) is really some of the most affordable (and attractive) floor tile available, but it’s most cheap if you learn to install it yourself – it’s really not that difficult – you can do it!

YARN OPENESS

My yarn and I have a really special relationship, I know that my yarn can come to talk to me about absolutely anything, no matter how embarrassing or scary – the key is to set boundaries but always have a swinging gate of dialog – and maybe you’ll be proud of your yarn someday too.

ORGANIC FARM CURTAINS

I think that is evidence that we’ve lost all hope.

HOW DO YOU SPELL TCHOTZKIE

Tchotchke.

(But if you landed here, does that mean I spelled it wrong somewhere…?)

SISTER BROTHER FISTBAD WAP

And with that, I’ve got nothing (hopefully it’s not something awful).

Thanks for reading and do stick around for another year!

8 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as answers, baktus, blogging, give them what they want, keywords, knitting, questions, searching, sock monkeys, t-shirts, veggie weenies

February 24, 2013 · 1:55 PM

UFOs progess report

My current publicly acknowledged unfinished objects* are closer to being finished. Let’s not talk about the sweater quilt just now, it is my favorite, but sadly banned back to the sack until I feel it’s ok to spend a little money on the backing – I’ve determined it should be a grey cotton jersey sheet, but damned if I can’t find one cheap.

I am tired of the rug. I cut up the t-shirts so slip-shod and sheddy that I constantly sneezed as I braided, and my nose filled with buckets [shrew-sized] of lint – I also realized there are good tightly woven shirts that are best for projects such as this, and lousy loose ones – this is made up of mostly lousy. So I finished with the old balls that I had already cut up, and cut up one additional shirt more since I wanted a little more green in it. Then I remembered how much it sucks to sew these things up, and I can only do about 20 minutes at a time before my fingers are a bloody mess, my hands cramp up, or I’d rather be doing something else. The right needle and thread would make my life easier, but I don’t know quite what those would be, and I don’t want to buy anything, so sewing while wearing kitchen gloves and multiple thimbles is sort of doing the trick at the moment. I’m sure a heavy-duty sewing machine with a zig-zag stitch would work wonders…

(And I think I already mentioned I don’t really like the look of the “country style” home with braided rugs and too much barn red and faded blues… But then we just bought a house which fell through, and then another which also fell through and both could have used a washable rug in one area or another, so I will continue in the hopes that a third house might not actually fall through and it might still be needed, especially for our dog that isn’t ours yet, and might not exist yet either).

And the shirt quilt is trucking along at a slow but steady pace. If I put my mind to it, I could finish the top pretty quickly, but I don’t seem to have any control over my mind at the moment (I mentioned we keep buying houses that fail, right?). I also know I will soon face the dilemma of not having a suitable backing material and possibly not enough for binding, but I have the cotton batting so my future purchase should be limited to just the fabric. It seems that should be easy enough, right? I’d be happy with a solid color or slight pattern – certainly there should be some basic cotton stuff on sale out there somewhere…

Looks like a poster session at a rag-picker’s conference, eh? I get to play-act being a professional again, only at my own conference there are no numbers or words (not that I don’t like words, and I have a healthy respect for numbers) or snooze-inducing power-points and sweaty nervous speakers. Or maybe I am back at a science fair – I won a couple of those once… yeah, that’s right, boost my self-esteem with memories of victories past. These “blocks” aren’t in any permanent order, or even in a decent layout at the moment – I just sew a bunch and then arrange them at the end.

*Yee hah! If you only knew the real count of my unfinished sh*t…**

**I need to know about filters and whatnot – anybody know? I’d hate to think I’d be censored for a “bad” word (godforbid the children!), though I wonder if breast still comes up as something to be censored… hmm… booby titty cans rack jugs dirty pillows.

Long term UFOs – part I

I was inspired by Completely Cauchy’s post about her long-term relationship with George, a beautiful (now finished) quilt. Hers was a relationship of nearly three years that reminded me that I have some so old that they’re common law now, or maybe they could even claim abandonment and neglect. But in my head, I see them finished and functioning in my life and I forget why they stalled. I know that I’m only to blame for my very whimsical approach to making things (whim in a bad unfocused sort of way, not one of quirkiness and smiles) and that is why I take months rather than days to finish some things, but other things came up too, right? I needed more materials, or thought I did, or if it was intended for a gift, the event passed by and then way by, or I thought it was something I could sell until I realized it took too long and I was my own sweatshop bastard boss, or, or, or…? So I am going to attempt to find out why a few select projects have languished (one for more than a decade!) and resolve* to finish them or send them to the scrap pile.

The t-shirt rag rug. I started this shortly after I moved into the house I moaned about in the first post, so that would make it around 6 years old, not too bad. I bought a giant crochet hook to make it and I told myself this was the excuse I needed to finally commit to learning how to crochet. I vaguely remember watching a few videos and starting it, but then I stopped…I think it was because I had cut up the shirts without any regard to keeping a uniform strip size, or else I just encountered my weird mental crochet block. So I started braiding the scraps. This was not an unfamiliar act for me – when I was around 10 or 12, I made a braided rag rug out of my mom’s old fabric and clothes scraps (including a 1960s era cotton paisley, and some suit wool) to rest on a brick dais of sorts where the wood stove was in our old house. I sat on that thing next to the stove nearly every day in the wintertime, then it became a favorite place of the dog’s as well. Needless to say, it was well-worn and probably thrown away when they sold the place. I had the intention of using my newly created t-shirt rug in my studio, but I ended up liking the bare floor since it was an easier surface on which to cut and smooth out materials. The shirts were all mine and mostly from the 1990s and early 00s and had become cropped from the dryer or had some other fault I couldn’t tolerate. And I have a vague memory of becoming annoyed with the balls getting twisted up while I was braiding them…but I quit the project about three years ago, though I think I may have gotten it out once in the meantime. Yesterday, I emptied out the box of rug snake:

It is much bigger pile than it appears, so I had the giddy sensation that maybe it was closer to being finished than I had remembered, so I tested it out.

Nope, it is still too small – larger than a doormat or bathroom rug, but too small for under the desk or kitchen table, or as I had originally wanted, a decent middle of the room-sized beast. But I’m also conflicted about not really loving the look of rag rugs – I abhor country decor for the most part, so now I think I’m remembering why I really stopped….

But I will finish it since I still have some balls of t-shirt and it requires no mental capacity.

*This is not a New Year’s resolution – the timing is pure coincidence.

Tag Archives: t-shirts

Search me

UFOs progess report

Long term UFOs – part I

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Meta