Inching along ...

It was Inevitable that I was going to post my ABC Wednesday post late again ... LOL

now what should I post about? ... international? invisible? ... ink? Insect?

I could stay Invisible ... but I am still Inching along with Wednesday ABC ...

btw, I am trying to get organised a couple of weeks early and starting a whole pile of posts and saving them as drafts, so that when I am off on my International travels - I can set them to ... hopefully ... post themselves. I might not be anywhere near a computer with www access though - so the links might not be added to the thingy until I get home) ... or I might not even find time to finish writing the posts before I go ... LOL

I is also for Individual ... and anyone who has been reading my blog will probably realise that I am one of those ... lol

I is also for Ink
hmmm - maybe I should have taken a photo of all the Ink splots some Idiotic student splattered all over the door of one of the science labs at the school I work at ... the pattern they made was quite Interesting - lol
... I probably did draw some stuff with Ink once, but will I remember to find it and take a photo? ... probably not - lol
I also "doodle" with pens while I am talking on the phone/listening to talks/lectures/etc - if it turns out I don't need to take a lot of notes, then I use the pen and paper to draw stuff instead. What do I draw? ... all sorts of weird stuff that probably comes from my Imagination ... lol

I also is for Insect ... there are lots of Insect photos on my blog already ... including photos of Inchworms - which are not worms, but they are Insects ... lol



This Inchworm is in my Index finger.
er - my finger looks a bit Icky - LOL
(probably mostly dirt from the garden/etc, and dry skin)


I also found a photo of an Insect Invasion:



If you click on that photo (which takes you to the full size version) you will probably be able to see that there are rather a lot of Insects (little brown beetles actually) all flying In to the yard on a sunny spring day (sometime in November - which sort of explains the Santa hat DD is wearing!) ... they were settling on those white flowered bushes (tea trees - an Australian native plant)



... and what were they doing? ... what a lot of things do in spring - I think they were meeting there for another I word ... looks like they were meeting there to make more beetles:



I actually found these 2 on DD's back, but they seemed quite happy to continue doing what they were doing on my finger!

I is also for Inchies.

"What are Inchies?" you ask? ... well ... they are one inch square bits of art ... in this case textile art (I think people do them in paper/etc too) ... they are a bit like artists trading cards - one makes a pile and swaps them with other people (often in sets of 9, or whatever). I am on an Art quilt related yahoogroup and we have had a few inchie swaps on there.
There are pictures of some inchies here and here and (a different swap) here ... these were all before the swaps I went in (they were links given to us to go and look at to find out what inchies were - lol) ... a Google search for "inchies" also turned up a lot of stuff about them too ... there is even a Flickr group ...

Anyway ... here are some photos of some of my inchies I made for the swaps we had on the Aus_NZartquilters yahoogroup (hmmm ... how many photos will depend on how many I find while I am digging around in my many folders of photos ... but if you look at all my posts that have the label "inchies" on them you might find some more that I have posted about - I know I have posted about my "plastic" ones)
We each made 7 sets of 9 - swapped 6 sets and kept one for ourselves, and we had a few different swaps, that each had a different theme.

These are my set of "Metallic" inchies:



I mounted mine on bits of black card, and the extra one at the bottom is one that I made into a dingly dangly (to hang on the Christmas tree maybe? lol) and popped it in the envelope with my inchies - a little present for the poor person who had to do all the swapping and send them all back.


Here are some more - The theme for this lot was "blue"



There are 2 sets in theis photo because these were the set I kept, and another spare set that I made for Mum ... not sure if I still have these in my sewing room or if I gave them to her ... (I might have to have a look for them and if I find them I can take them up with me and give them to her before we fly off on our trip)

Talking about flying - I is also for ...
... in flight food!



this was when the kids and I flew to Adelaide back in December 2007
(to visit a pile of relatives i have there, and also to see Mum and Dad, who were also over there visiting the same pile of relatives, while their new house was being built)

that airline food tasted ok actually (especially that little bottle of Gin - lol) ... somehow I don't think I will get a meal (or any free drinks) on the Virgin flight up to Qld, but hopefully we will be fed on the Emirates Flight to Dubai ... if not - then I guess I will be eating the chocolate bar I will be taking in my cabin baggage, and/or one or 2 of the muesli bars Mum said she will be bringing with her - LOL

Anyway ... this may or may not be the last post here for a few weeks ... depends if I get organised and finish writing ABC Wednesday posts for the next few weeks, and if they actually do automatically get posted to my blog like they should do if I set things up right ... lol
(but even if my posts "happen" ok, they probably won't get added to "mr linky" and I probably won't be online to see and reply to any comments until I get back at the end of April).

I is also for Idiot ... some people probably think I am one - especially when I stay up until "stupid O'clock" posting silly stuff like this on my blog - LOL
(it is actually after 1:30am now - the time I put on this post is about what it was when I came in here to start checking my e-mail and log in to type the rest of this blog post, which I actually started writing a week or 2 ago when I was thinking of things I could post for a few different letters of the alphabet - lol)

Peculiar Plastic

Yes - I am sure you will all agree this looks peculiar:

- it is actually a set of "Inchies" - which are 1" x 1" squares - that I made for a swap on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ ... the theme for the swap was "Plastic" and we each made 7 sets of 9, kept 1 and sent in the other 6 sets so the person doing the swapping could swap them all around and send us back 6 different sets ... I got mine back the other day, but I have not taken photos of them yet ... I might blog about them when I have actually mounted them on something, or whatever I end up doing to display them ...

(this is the 4th inchie swap we have done, and I have not done my thing with the ones I got back in the other 3 swaps yet either - lol)

so ... why am I blogging about this lot now?

well - I thought someone (either someone from the swap or the one or 2 of you who actually come here to read my blog - lol) might want to know how I made them.

The pink fabric is non woven polyethelene (the stuff they use for "green" shopping bags etc - actually it is one of those bags you get when you ... or your teenage daughter ... buy clothing at a certain shop with very loud music playing and a few "normal" items of clothing in amongst lots of stuff in very small sizes that seem to be designed to fit peculiar shaped kids who want to look like they are adults who belong on a sleezy street at night - lol) the silvery looking stuff printed on the pink fabric is parts of the logo that was on there.

The 2 with blue on them (top right and bottom left) have a layer on top that was done by cutting up strips of blue plastic shopping bag and laminating them (with laminating sheets in the laminating machine they have in the front office at work) ... the middle square was done the same way, but I laminated some little motifs that I tatted - in fact those squares were the reason I used the laminating machine in the firtst place - the others happened because the laminating sheets were A4 and the tatted motifs only used 1/3 of a sheet, so I grabbed some other stuff to experiment with the other part of the sheet (I also laminated some dead flowers, from a pot plant I have next to my desk, on the other 1/3 of the sheet but I have not taken a photo of those).

The bottom left bluish square has a purple sequin stitched on with lime green thread, and stitched on top of the sequin (holding it on) is a bit of fishing line tied into a weird knot.

The other bluish square (top right) has a round plastic beady thing (that I made - more on that later) also stitched on with lime green thread.

The top left, top middle, bottom right and bottom middle squares have a layer of black and/or clear plastic over the pink - it was the front of a "book" of furnishing fabric samples, that I was just about to throw away (the plastic, not the fabric - lol) when I remembered I was about to make plastic inchies. The bit of plastic was black and clear, so some squares ended up clear, some had black on (carefully cut/chosen so they had the black stripes/corners on them) and one lot (top middle) had all black.

The top left and bottom right squares (and the one in the middle on the left hand side too) have offcuts of plastic, and those weird beady things I made, sewn on to them (with lime green thread again) ... the offcuts were from both the plastic I used on the tops of those, and from the laminating sheets (it was a real pain to sew through those - they are rather tough!).

The middle square on the top row has a purple heart (cut from a plastic bag from some yarn I bought from that big fabric/yarn/craft shop that has purple bags) and on top of that a heart cut from some netting (I think it came from the lolly bag I got at a wedding reception last year) and on top of that is a pink heart (same pink fabric stuff as the other lot) ... stitched with lime green thread of course (well with the pink and the black and stuff - I just had to use lime green - lol).

The middle square on the bottom row is decorated with a square of "fabric" I made by ironing shredded bits of shopping bag and other plastic (lolly wrappers etc) and cutting it up.

The squares on either side of the middle row have the same plastic (from the fabric sample book cover) on the bottom, under the pink fabric (except for the set I kept, which for some reason has the right hand side one on top - oops - there were a few "mistakes", most of them ended up as spares that I kept and didn't put in the sets, but I must have missed that one - I did finish them in rather a hurry so that I could post them [almost] on time)

The middle left square is decorated with another one of those beady things I made, on top of some more "fabric" I made - by ironing different coloured bits of shredded plastic shopping bag (btw - both lots of ironed stuff were done with baking paper under them, and on top of them - so it wouldn't stick to what I ironed it on, or to the iron)

I think that covers what I did on/to all the squares ... probably in more detail than anybody cares to know - LOL

Now ... about those beady things I mentioned ... how did I make those?

well ... I had this weird idea and tried something, and it actually worked - I got some plastic drinking straws and cut them into bits about 1 or 2 mm long (so I had a pile of little circles) and I spread them out between 2 sheets of baking paper and ironed them flat ... and the 2 coloured ones? - some of the straws were a bit thinner than the others so I put them inside each other before I cut them up ... some of them stayed together when I cut them, and became 2 coloured beads ... now I need to find a 3rd size of staw and try 3 colours - LOL

(some of them did squash together flat when I cut them up, but most of them popped open when I touched them, and the rest did when I picked them up by the ends and squeezed a bit)

I have not got around to taking a photo of a pile of the drinking straw beads, but here is a scan I did, of some of the beads in with some other leftover bits that I put in a plastic bag and gave to the person organising the swap.

btw, they also look really good stitched onto black fabric, and decorated/embroidered around, with that same lime green thread!

(but I have not taken a photo/done a scan of that yet either ... that will have to join the long list of other things I still need to blog about)