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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Canberra was Awesome!!!!!!

So I haven't been the best little blogger out there, but this time I have an excuse....

Me and Lewy went down to Canberra for the weekend to see our friends Kirstee and Aaron for their housewarming!!! This was the first time I had been down there as well so I was pretty excited!
  Lewy had to work on the Friday so I got to stay home and run around like an idiot trying to pack two peoples things... I still feel like I forgot something but I don't know if I left it here or there. By the way, that's me to the left there, sporting a brand new bulky beanie I made for myself using my easy beanie pattern but altering it slightly. It was so warm and cozy I'm happy I brought it with me because it was absolutely freezing down there!

It took us about 2.5 hours to make it from our house to their house, but that was also at night and we did stop for food, all in all we made some pretty good time! We got really lucky too because Kirstee finally got a day off work, and we got to spend some time with her =)

Now, they have a dog named Zoe, and I swear to all that's good and holy this dog is the most cutest well trained animal in existence! I can only imagine Sade or Daisy being this well trained in my dreams.... the only bad thing was her tail was freaking deadly and she beat us with it every chance she could get (she was just wagging her tail), she was also very ball oriented. She would stand there and stare at the ball, get all excited when you would play with her but she never wanted you to stop throwing it, she would grumble at you if you even looked like you wanted to go inside.... which believe me we all wanted to stay inside because it was freezing down there!

 Kirstee also gave me a great big giant present, three pairs of shoes that didn't fit her any more =) Which made me feel really really special!




Sunday morning was a bit of a hassle, we had to wake up early, Kirstee had to be at work, we had to head off home so I could buy a pair of steel cap boots that in the end I didnt even need....

We said good bye to every one, hopped in the car, and 2 hours later I fell asleep in the passenger seat, and woke up about 30 minutes from home... It was strange to fall asleep in a place I didn't know and wake up knowing exactly where I was, I kind of thought I had dreamed the whole trip!

On Sunday morning before we had to leave I was able to find enough signal on my phone to check my email, (they hadn't connected the internet yet) and was pleasantly surprised to see one from my paypal account saying that I had received a payment.... IT FINALLY HAPPENED!!!! Some one out there in the world found one of my patterns on Ravelry, and they pushed that button and bought it!!!!! I finally sold one of my patterns!!!!!!! 

Also lately I have been doing some training to get started in a new field of work. I've been trying to get out of the swimming pool for ages, I reek of chlorine all the time no matter how many showers I take.... and while I love the work, its really taking its toll on me, my hair, and my skin, not to mention that since its now winter down here I have been cut back to one shift a week... that's just not enough to survive on when I have bills and things to pay of my own.
I did my white card online, which means now I can go onto construction sites, and then I did my blue card on Monday, I had to take the train to get to the place and O-M-G I really hate the train. I wore my steel cap boots (which gave me blisters) and brought my black pen like the website told me to do, and as soon as I got there they asked if I had a blue pen, and no one else was in boots. I really wanted to crawl in a hole at that point, but I went ahead and now I am fully qualified to legally control traffic using a stop/slow sign!

Well that's been my week so far, how has yours been?


 XxX ~RahRah

Monday, July 8, 2013

The Cake is a lie... but my companion cube foot stool is.... er not?

Halleluiah IT'S FINALLY FREAKING FINISHED!!!!

 I've been working on this foot stool for jebus only knows how long.... but yesterday I finally finished it. You all have Lewy to thank for it, he came and plopped it down on my lap while I was watching How Clean Is Your House (rather than actually cleaning it like I should but shhhhh!), told me he was sick of looking at it half finished and that I had better finish it off before the end of the day.

Now lucky for my I only had a small bit left to go, otherwise I might have just broken down and cried right there on the lounge with images of lounge room rubbish tips blaring in the background....

And the best thing of all? You can make this thing yourself.... and no it doesnt have to be footstool size!





 To the left here we have the basic pattern you need... I did forget to mention that the whole big square needs to be in dark grey felt or material... but this is pretty much all you need to know. You can re-size this pattern any way you like... make a teeny tiny one... make a gigantic one... make whatever you want out of it!










Steps:
All my pretty pieces, and sewn the hearts and "legs"on
1. Cut out all your pieces. If you're using the pattern I have given you I suggest cutting out the whole big square first, then cutting out the other pieces from inside, will save you having to print the pattern out multiple times. I made my squares about 1.5 feet because after all I did make a foot rest and it would be hard to rest your achy feet on a pillbox.
2. First of all you need to sew the heart shape into the center of the circle shape. Do this until you run out of hearts and circles.
3. You need to attach the purple "legs" (for lack of a better word to call them at the moment" to the top, bottom, and each side of the circle. It should look like you have sewn the circle with the heart on it into the middle of a big plus sign, and do this until you run out of purple pieces and hearts, you should have 6 at the end one for eac
h face of the cube.
Sewing those corners together!

4. Now you can save time by doing this step now, or you can save it for later. If you have a sewing machine handy I suggest you do it now because it really will save some time! Take three pieces of the Corner shape and sew the long sides together, you will get a pyramid shape. Do this until you run out of corner shapes, you should end up with 8 sewn together pieces. Take the light grey rectang
le pieces and sew one end of the short edges together. Now set these pieces aside, because you wont need them until the very end.
5. Take your heart on a plus sign pieces, and you are going to sew them on to each face of the cube. I found that pinning them in place helped me center them better while I was stitching them on. (Let me tell you a sewing machine would have come in soooooo handy at this point, and this is why this darn thing took soooo long to finish!)
6. After you have stitched all the faces on you are ready to make them into a cube. I found that stitching them all together in a big cross shape was more effective than trying to sew them into shape one by one... so you do four long in a row, it doesnt matter which way the row goes, just make sure that your purple "legs" line up and touch each other. Then on the second square of the row you will sew one on the top and one on the bottom of the row so it looks like a cross shape. (not an "X" cross but more of a "t" cross)
My "cross" shape
7. Now stitch all the edges together around the two prongs of the cross to make the cube, this can be a bit tricky if you're using a machine, but its alright if you round the corners a little bit on the cube because they will be covere
d up at the end. Make sure you leave a spot open so you can flip the whole thing inside out (so the seams dont show) and so you can stuff it!
8. Stuff that thing until your hearts content... but please dont over stuff it, just remember it's a COMPANION CUBE not a COMPANION BALL. Then after you're finished stuffing it stitch closed the opening. I found it best to leave one of the corners open to do this step since they are going to be covered up at the end it doesnt really matter if you have a noticeable seam after you close it up.
9. Time to put those corners on! This bit was also a bit tricky, you dont
want to put them on too tight because they are supposed to protrude from the cube a little bit, stitch around 2.5 of the sides then take a small amount of stuffing and cram it into the corner just to make it a bit more "corner-ey". and continue to stitch around the last side, tie off the thread and viola you have just done a corner!
10. Last step! The rectangle pieces you have laying around will go over the purple "legs" and in between the two corner pieces you have done. Stitch around all of the edges you can put a little bit of stuffing in this bit as well if you like but thats up to you. Tie off all your edges and you're finished!


 Now you may have noticed in my "finished" picture up there my rectangles in the middle dont look as though they have seams in the middle. Don't worry I'm not that adapt at sewing by hand... me in all my smartness didnt cut enough of them in the first place, and therefore had to make do with one to cover the whole distance instead of two thats why it looks a little bit stretched... but still I'd rather have one that I made myself than one that I bought from the shops and paid a ridiculous amount of money for.... seriously it couldnt cost them any more to make than it did you right? So why can they charge $50 for it when it barely costs $15 to make? HUGE PRICE MARK UP!!!! and mine looks just as good anyways!

Now so no one sues, all rights to the companion cube are for whoever made the portal game... i dont take credit for coming up with the design or the name or any of that stuff... I do however take credit for the pattern.... because lets face it you would have to be a freaking rocket scientist to come up with that on your own!

Now if you will all excuse me, I'm gonna go and put my feet up, have a nice cup of tea and watch some more bad youtube videos that make me feel guilty for not cleaning or eating the right foods.... and then I'm going to go to work and deal with some screaming children while I can barely breath out my nose due to my allergies not being able to make up their minds if they want to act up or not....

Yes I am in my pajamas.... but it is not even 9am and I will probably stay in them until I have to change clothes for work..... Don't Judge ME!!!! By the way I freaking love my socks, they have pandas on the toes, and the colors are so bright they almost glow in the dark! I just wish they were a little bit warmer, because it was 2 degrees outside this morning.... 2! I'm bloody freezing here!!!

Now that I think about it actually I'm gonna have to hide my pretty and comphy new foot stool.... because lets face it, it's pretty and comphy and the mario mushroom foot stool that I made for Lewy ages ago has gone a bit... er, flat.
 
Which is pretty funny when you think about it because when I first made it it looked like 
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and Lewy squished it with his big man feet!