an embarrassment of daylight

it’s my 300th post on this blog...this started out in august 2007 as a required blog for a poetry class, and i liked it so i kept going with it, using it as part journal, part organizational tool, and whatever else. just recently i learned that it’s fun to interact with other blog people and use it to meet super interesting folks, so i’ve been tweaking and reorganizing things so that the blog’s not quite so...nebulous and inapproachable, as it used to be.

i feel so repetitive lately gushing about the beautiful weather. today it was 68 degrees with a warm, steady breeze. the sun didn’t set until 7:52, thanks to fabulous daylight savings time. i saw the first open daffodils today, and while i was out walking my dog a butterfly flew past us. every crocus is blooming, forsythia and some magnolias are blooming, and my anemone flowers are just a few days away from sticking their purple heads out the top of an old rubber galosh.

another awesome thing is that my toe has finally stopped hurting. i broke my right, second-to-pinky-toe (ring toe?) about a month ago, and i was limping for weeks. i’m a poor limper, very self-conscious about it; it’s funny how a tiny little bone in a tiny little toe can disrupt your entire technique for carrying yourself by foot. some days i probably looked like i had a peg leg, or like i was doing an insensitive imitation of someone with a massive leg injury. i developed blisters in weird places from putting too much weight on the inside of my foot. my toe and the top of my foot turned all sorts of pretty colors, but not until a few days after the break happened, so for a while it looked like i was making a huge fuss over nothing. it’s mostly healed now, just in time for spring.

i had a pretty craft-tacular weekend…i made three cloth grocery bags, a sock monkey, a macropod monster, and i worked on a crazy furniture project that i’ll post about in detail when it’s finished.

first we have a tacky, day-glo ode to john waters:

a tacky, day-glo piece of i’m-trying-to-work-through-my-fabric-stash-so-sometimes-things-like-this-can’t-be-helped:

and a fun animal bag:

since my bags are reversible i usually use two different fabrics, but this particular pattern is large enough that the inside and outside show different creatures. it has a blue owl, orange cat, yellow bird, nest with blue eggs, grasshopper and ladybug, all hanging out together in tree branches.

the sock monkey is lavender-rose scented, thanks to a heart-shaped sachet of fragrant dried flowers i implanted in hir chest:

hir name is homosassa papadopoulos, and i haven’t decided yet if ze’s going to be a toy society drop. by now i’ve made over a dozen red heel sock monkeys and given away all except one (my first attempt at a sock creature, sarsaparilla), so i’d like to keep another for myself sometime, now that i’m better at making them. i think i’ll hold on to homosassa for a few days and see if we develop a bond.

i think hir face looks like a combination between jason alexander’s duckman and beaker from the muppets.

and here’s my latest macropod monster, also implanted with a sachet. it doesn’t have a name just yet. it’s definitely going to be a toy society drop:

nikki and i hung out saturday and knitted at the coffee shop...we used to do this three or four times a week, but it’s been over a year, thanks to her apparently very insecure now-ex girlfriend. anyway, i think i convinced spoony to put some of her awesome knitted creatures toward the toy society cause. she’s been making all kinds of cute little things, like beep-boop the robot, who comes complete with converse sneakers that actually lace:

i’m not looking forward to the rest of this week...i have my first doctor’s appointment since i was around 15 years old, and i have two articles due, which stresses me out even though it shouldn’t. right now i’m not sure how to do anything other than enjoy the weather and watch my plants grow.