It's all going so well! And so fast! I am afeared of the moment it all goes horribly wrong. Admittedly she is about half the size of my Enterprise cross stitch, so you would hope it'd be quicker and easier than that one. But I am using many of the exact same thread colours (yup, my waste-not-want-not philosophy extends even to thread) so I may experience just as much angst before it's done. Aaaaargh. Why do I feel the need to turn every craft project into a battle? Bah. But she is looking pretty. Woot!

Is there such a thing as crafting-bipolar-ness?

Today:



Two days ago:

After my first foray into two-tone stencils I decided to try something a little more complicated. Which then turned out to be a great deal more complicated. I never learn, apparently.

I decided I needed a t-shirt with the Enterprise sweeping majestically across it, as you do. The first hurdle came when I discovered that photoshop won't print a large image over multiple pages without a fight. (Thank goodness I'm related to a graphic designer.) Once that was dealt with this, of course, resulted in a very large and very delicate stencil, which, of course, the cat wanted to attack. So once I had rescued the stencil from furry, clawy doom it would all be plain sailing, right? Wrong. Grey fabric paint seems to be an endangered species, so I had to mix that colour myself. And matching the second stencil up proved to be quite annoying. (To the extent that it became a stencil made of five separate, overlapping pieces.) And I hurt my arm by holding it too tense to try and get perfect lines. And... And.. I'll stop moaning now.

In the end, as ever, it turned out really quite pretty. It would seem that I have some sort of ridiculous need to hate a project whilst actually doing it, in order for it to turn out well. I'm not sure that's a good thing. But my Enterprise t-shirt is beautiful and I love her! So nyeh.



The t-shirt has the whole floaty, asymmetric thing going on, so the Enterprise sort of wraps around me. From some angles it looks a bit strange and abstract, but from others it shows itself off nicely. I hadn't anticipated that, but I like it.



It kinda looks like the Enterprise is about to attack my head, doesn't it?



I'm particularly pleased with how clear and precise the lettering came out - sometimes when you make a mistake or something gets smudged in the design you can go back later and touch it up, but that's often much harder to do with something you don't paint on, something that's more like negative space. But this, thankfully, came out lovely.

This picture's the only one where you can see the slight hint of something that's a little more obvious with the naked eye - sparkly lens flare on the nacelles!



One more pic and then I'll stop!



Many more photos here (I went even more snap-happy than usual with this one!)

If anyone would like me to do a tutorial on this sort of thing (like I did for "bleached-out" t-shirt designs) please let me know and I'd be happy to oblige!

Saw Flight of the Conchords live about a month ago (almost exactly a month ago in fact) and for some reason it's taken me this long to post about it properly. I fail at prompt internet-usage. Anyway. It was, unsurprisingly, a hilarious and highly entertaining evening. The boys were looking particularly yummy, and the songs sounded fantastic. Many more instruments on stage than I had expected (and some that didn't get used - they don't follow their own set list much from what I can tell. I'm pretty sure we got an unplanned rendition of Albi, and Jemaine was constantly mouthing song titles at Bret, who either would nod or look at him like he was a madman.)

Highlights of the gig:

• Heckler: “Where’s Mel?” Jermaine: “She’s fictional. So she’s hanging out with Bart Simpson and... Taggart." (cue huge cheer from the crowd as Scottish crowds do when you mention anything remotely Scottish.)
• Three new songs. Three! (Fave moment: "I said, 'I don't have any I.D. on me / Who even carries I.D. in 1353?!' / 'I maketh not the rules,' quoth he.")
• Jenny! Woo! I love that song.
• Sparkly jumpsuits.
• Tiny piano!
• The New Zealand orchestra. His name is Matt. He does odd jobs (but not strange tasks).
• Three part audience singalong to Epileptic Dogs.
• Many other things that have fallen out of my brain at this moment in time.

Ever-so-slight disappointments of the evening:

• No Bus Driver's Song. Denied yet again.
• No keytar. (But there were instruments up there I could not identify for the life of me.)

My cheeks hurt from laughing by the end of the night. And the crowd was on fine form. Not too much random heckling. Found a few good youtube clips of the show - so here's kilt towels and a very different version of Sugalumps.

And of course I had to go in a homemade Conchords t-shirt. Who would I be if I didn't? This was my first attempt at a two-tone print. It required two stencils, which didn't end up matching as precisely as required, so it was a slightly aggravating process. I think I ended up making t-shirt!Jemaine look far grumpier than he did in the original photo. But it's something I'm going to keep experimenting with.



Slightly wonkily coloured close up:

.

And even more pics here if you're interested.

Despite my fears she's really starting to come along nicely now. And no unpleasant unstitching situations since my unfortunate jinxing in my last post. It could still come back to bite me in the arse at any point though!

Me and the macro setting on my camera are getting better acquainted, so the colours are more accurately represented, but the focus has gone a little less, well, focused. I'll get a tripod at some point and everything should look much better. It seems like for every new crafty or artsy skill I learn, it just opens up a new area of things I need to investigate. It's like falling down the rabbit hole.

Here's how Serenity looks today:



And here's how she looked earlier in the week
7th of June:


4th of June:


Eleven of the twenty colours are in there now, and some of them you can even tell apart! The blue part in the top left is the light of Serenity's port engine (if that makes any sense to anyone). I'm starting to see the shape of her, which is quite exciting to experience this early on. And I've only had one incident so far that required the unpicking of stitches and copious swearing. It's all going ridiculously well thus far.

I really shouldn't have said that, should I?



Here's how it looked on the 27th of May:

:

And on the 30th of May: