[one] i went six months without a single unsolicited stomach touch, and it was great. this morning i went to my old high school to cheer on my brothers, and it was like stepping into the land of unwanted hands on my stomach. i do not get it. first of all, pregnant people deserve personal space, too. it's bad enough we have someone coming in and taking over on the inside, it would be great if people on the outside could respect boundaries. and second of all, what do you think you are touching exactly? yes, there is a baby in there, but it's under a whole lotta layers. aside from the usual clothes and skin and muscles and everything else, i also have an anterior placenta (not sure if this is considered tmi so um sorry?), so really, there is absolutely no point in you rubbing your hand on me. it gets even worse when your sister shows up and asks all of your old teachers that hadn't already felt that they were somehow allowed to just touch my stomach (which isn't even that big yet!) in the middle of a conversation that had nothing to do with babies or pregnancy at all, "do you want to touch her stomach?" and then i can't say, "please don't" because i am me and these are my old teachers and ugh. i feel like one of those statues that people rub shiny because they think it's good luck.

[two] i'm sitting at mason, and it's pretty empty because it's still a little early and finals are coming up (already here?) and so it's really hard to not hear everything people on this floor are saying. anyway, one guy says that he didn't like any of the harry potter movies except for the second one and i almost had to say something because, what? the second movie is probably the worst of all the movies. how is it not only your favorite, but the only one you liked? i mean, goodness. i still don't understand this.

[three] i am supposed to be working on dissertation stuff. i am not working on dissertation stuff. i cannot work on dissertation stuff. it is impossible. i do not think i can school anymore. my brain refuses to function. i will gladly sit and research things that have nothing to do with my dissertation, but that i find fascinating, but i just shut down when it comes to my actual work. ugh.

[four] my husband, siblings, mom, and i went to a craft show yesterday at the place where we do pottery, and i bought this jam (because i have a really hard time resisting homemade jams for some reason. they just really appeal to me.), and i suddenly really want to eat it right now. and i do not have it with me. lesson learned: always carry a jar of jam in my bag. also, there were a bunch of things that i either make/ could make being sold for anywhere between fifteen and sixty dollars, and whenever i go to these kinds of things i think, i could totally sell my stuff. and now i am in the mood to open an etsy store again. 

i know it's hard

back in high school, there was a running joke of sorts about my girl-scout-ness for lack of a better word. you know, because i did things like bake brownies from scratch and we had a craft room (slash box after we moved) in my house. they would make comments about how i probably made my skirt and my tights and my bag and... you get the idea. a friend wrote in my end of the year notebook thingie:

"I'll remember your craftiness/girl scoutness and how you practically made everything you own... I can imagine you probably made this notebook yourself you liar... that man didn't give it to you."

(those ellipses are not me editing the quote. we were all really big on ellipses back then....) she then wrote that if i was a shape i would be a rectangle, but that is neither here nor there.

anyway. it has been eight years since i graduated high school, and i feel like i am becoming the person that they said i was back then. i just want to make everything. i want to spend hundreds of thousands of hours knitting and only stop when my hands are so cramped that i can barely hold the needles. and even then, i'll just switch to crocheting. (who woulda thought? me, crocheting.)  i want every blanket in my house to be made by me. i want to knit all my clothes. (i'm not even joking, i had the strongest urge to knit myself an entire outfit the other day but i refrained because although i'm fine with being the person who wants to knit their entire wardrobe, i don't think i'm ready to become the person that actually knits her own clothes.) once i finish this turtle scarf for my sister, i plan on crocheting a teddy bear. because why not. i want everyone i know to have babies so that i can make them blankets and hats and sweaters and toys. i want to have made every pot, plate, and mug i own. every vase and box and bowl. i want to make my own notebooks. (i've only done paper-making once outside of science class in sixth grade, but i loved it.)

my most recent crafty urge is to take up weaving. my mom has this huge loom (that i totally plan on stealing someday) that we were kind of obsessed with growing up. so she bought a table loom (that i plan to take a lot sooner than someday) and taught us to weave. we made blankets for our dolls, but then moved on, like kids do. recently, though, i have seen a bunch of woven tapestries and cannot shake the feeling of i need to do that. summers are kind of crazy, so i asked my mom to reteach me to weave in the fall, which she said she'd do. but i still want to weave right now. i am trying really, really hard not to buy myself a lap loom which pretty much needs no teaching because that is fifty dollars that could be used on so many other things. but good god is it hard. if i make it to the end of the summer without writing about my new woven artwork for my walls, i think i deserve a prize.

*Keep Your Head Up - Andy Grammer

it's not so bad

knitting relaxes me. i can get into a groove and let my mind wander or listen to music (there's a taylor swift/miley cyrus playlist on youtube that has become some of my top knitting music and i have no idea why) or watch tv or whatever else i wanna do. my hands know what to do on their own. if i start out tense and angry, i will finish calm and relaxed and the owner of a new scarf or hat. it's awesome.

crocheting has always been the opposite for me. the minute i pick up a crochet needle i feel myself start to tense up. i get snappy and angry as i start my chain. five minutes into a project and a string of curses is falling from my lips. my fingers are constantly stumbling. i never find a groove. and it seems like i am in a perpetual state of  "ugh should i pull out this whole row or should i live with the seven hundred mistakes i managed to make in five stitches?" it's bad. because of this, i tend to avoid crocheting.

the other day, though, i saw a cupcake scarf and fell in love. i knew there was no way to knit it and so i heaved a big sigh and grabbed my crochet needles. i promptly decided that cupcakes were maybe a bit too difficult for my first crochet project in over a year, though, and since i have been obsessed with cookies lately and i was literally eating a chocolate chip cookie as i looked up crochet cupcake patterns, i decided to make a chocolate chip cookie scarf instead. added bonus: i already knew how to crochet a circle.

i'm not going to lie, the first couple circles came out a bit wonky. but cookies are not perfect so whatever, i thought. and then i somehow ended up with a circle that was smaller than the first two i made despite doing it exactly the same way and i decided that it would be unrealistic for every cookie to be the same size. basically, i decided not to take the project very seriously. it helped. and though i never did reach the point where my hands could work unsupervised, i managed to fall into a sort of rhythm. the repeating one-two-one-two one-one-two-one-one-two started to have that same calming effect as watching scenery blur by on a long car ride. and i finished a crocheting project without wanting to kill someone. yay me.

(immediately afterwards, though, i picked up my knitting needles. i am starting a rainbow scarf. well, the first rainbow scarf. i made the stripes too wide so i had to change my design, but it should still come out nice.)

anyway, here's the scarf:

*Thank You - Dido

i have written you down, now you will live forever

i am so grateful for the things in my life that allow me to be creative. that's what i'm feeling today as i sit on my couch crocheting and thinking, "hey, maybe crocheting isn't so bad after all." (the list of things i will do to avoid cleaning my apartment is ridiculous.) it's no surprise that i like to write, and sometimes i'm even good at it. i have also mentioned on here a few million times that knitting is one of my most favorite things to do in the whole wide world. (i will never understand the people who choose crocheting over knitting. never.) i take pottery classes and now have a coffee table that is virtually useless because i have nowhere else to put the stuff i make in my tiny apartment. i bake all the time - sometimes with recipes i make up on the spot. i make tshirts when i'm bored. i think nail art is fantastic and try out different designs whenever i get the chance. i have two glue guns. there is a point to this laundry list of activities, i swear.

you see, this blog has become a sort of reference for me. when i want to know when something happened or how something happened or even if something happened, i turn to my blog posts. i can usually find the answer. it's also a place where i come (albeit less frequently than i used to) to gush and rant and ramble about the things that make up my life. the other day, i realized that i failed at both of these. a while ago i baked cookies and decorated them as members of my family. they were pretty awesome. when i went to check when exactly i did this, i found that i hadn't mentioned it on my blog. not much happens in my life, guys, and i'm used to finding these small things on here. in fact, i barely talked about baking at all. or anything really. i post specific pieces of writing, so why should my other creative outlets be neglected?

anyway, i decided that i would take a few posts to talk about some of my favorite projects. partly to have them stored here for when my memory fails me and partly because i have spent the past few days sitting in front of a blank screen wondering what to blog about. here you have project number one:

(this project makes me feel like a jerk. i'm just going to go ahead and let you all know that in advance.)

at one point last summer (i think) i was scrolling through kickstarter projects and stumbled upon a lady who made and sold handmade shirts for kids. they were really cool. i couldn't decide whether or not to back her project, but i decided to get a couple of the shirts for my nephews. when i went to her site, though, i saw that toddler shirts were being sold for forty dollars each, and i am sorry but i am unwilling to spend that much money on a shirt that will only be worn a handful of times before it is outgrown. so i completely stole her idea - like a jerk - and made shirts of my own for my nephews. and then i forgot to back her kickstarter, too. oops. anyway, they are interactive shirts that allow the kids to choose what they want on them (using snaps and buttons!) and were super fun to make (kinda time consuming, though). added bonus: what i would have spent one hundred and sixty dollars on, i got for under thirty. and that includes buying a snap gun. 

space tshirts! the white and yellow stars were made with fabric paint. everything else can be snapped on/off to make the space scene you wanna wear.

sandwich shirts! wear a cheeseburger, pb&j, egg sandwich, or even tomatoes on toast or other random combinations. whatever floats your boat. 

i ended up really liking these and wanted to make more but felt like too much of a jerk to do so. part of me wants to open an etsy store and sell these. the other parts wants to punch me in the face for being a plagiarist. 

*Poet - Bastille