A Hitchcock-themed looooong rainy (and snowy!) weekend

This past weekend was extremely rainy, and thus my plans to get a lot of hiking done were foiled. The rain was highly conducive to crafting, though!! I spent most of the weekend decoupaging, knitting, crocheting, and revisiting several Hitchcock films that I adore. The first I watched was "Topaz", a lesser known and less popular, less Hitchcock-like film. This film received very poor reviews when it was released, but I happen to like it a lot. The film is a fictional cold war tale of espionage wherein a French spy working for America tries to unveil a missile plot between Cuba and Russia. I highly recommend it if you are into older movies, are into the more popular Hitchcock films, or are just looking for a older (but new to you) movie to watch. I also watched "North by Northwest" and "To Catch a Thief", two other favorites.

I really want to buy the coveted but rare criterion dvd collection, "Wrong Men and Notorious Women". It is no longer made and racks up a pretty penny on amazon (between $170-300 for a mint opened copy). It's on my to purchase someday list. It includes the thrillers 'the 39 steps, 'rebecca', 'notorious', 'spellbound', and 'the lady vanishes'. Incidentally, I have not seen any of these films... maybe someday!

I have nearly completed the items created from vintage bird atlases that I mentioned in an earlier post. I have posted a photo of one of the creations.

I hope to get all of them on etsy later tonight. Note that I am releasing a limited number of the hanging plaques. I was only able to find about 8 of these at the craft store, so only ONE plaque of each type of bird will be available! I plan to list about 4 out of the 7 total plaques tonight. I want to keep one for myself ;)
The little lacquered boxes (that I will be posting), however, I will be producing a lot of.

These items start as pages from a vintage bird atlas. Some of the birds are cut directly out of the atlas, and others are photocopied and shrunk/stretched. The quality of the copies is indistinguishable from the book. I had them copied at a professional copier. Next, the images are carefully cut out and decoupaged onto a painted box or plaque. Next, several coats (20-30) of decoupage medium and lacquer are applied, and the items are sanded in between coats. The plaques are attached to a lovely shiny strand of ribbon for hanging.

If I can find more plaques, I will be making more! But I do plan on making a bunch of the boxes.

I also crocheted a hat for a friend's birthday and started working on a sweater for St. patrick's day. It is the 'Sloane' sweater from Lisa Shobhana Mason's "Yarnplay". Her blog can be found here. Interestingly, I began and finished this sweater a looooooong time ago... only to realize that I didn't check my gauge like a true amateur. The sweater was enormous. I am happy to note that it only took a weekend to knit up, so not that much time was wasted... and I learned a very valuable lesson... CHECK YOUR GAUGE! The rather large sweater vest sat in my UFO bin for quite awhile. Two days ago I got the pleasure of frogging all of it and starting over. Instead of knitting the two sides separately, I am knitting the sweater in the round, and making it a tad bit longer, since I am longwaisted. I will post pics as I have them. I'm about 30% done! I am knitting it in Rowan Ribbon Twist, colorway "rabble". It will be perfect for St. Patty's!

As if the weekend wasn't idyllic enough, on Sunday it started snowing. FINALLY! Since moving to South Carolina, I have watched in irritation as all my Virginia friends and family have been repeatedly doused in snow this winter! How truly ironic (and unfair) that the year I move away from Virginia, the state gets a ton of snow! I remember last year I was wearing shorts during the winter, the temperatures were so warm. Oh well, I finally got my wish! It snowed about 4 inches.. enough for school to be canceled on Monday... which led to much more crafting (and cleaning).

That's the view from my craft room window. I love sitting in that room and dreamily watching the birds at the feeder. It's very soothing. I love it even more covered under blankets of snow. This photo was taken at 7 in the morning. By noon, nearly everything melted.

I also spent about 2 hours yesterday baking some goodies which I have shown below.
I made some red velvet cupcakes (from allrecipes.com), oatmeal spice raisin cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. Definitely enough food to keep my mouth busy for awhile.

I used store bought icing (out of laziness). I'm no expert baker by any stretch of the imagination, although I suppose I would love to be!

View of the chocolate cookie dough. These turned out reallllly good. The bowl is from the Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen series. I love the entire Nigella set. They were designed with Terence Conran. Definitely check the series out online. the bread bin is vintage, and purchased on ebay.

I thought I would also post a photo of the cats, who have been absolutely nuts the past two weeks. I apparently have a mouse living in my attic. The cats spend long hours in the bathtub and in the laundry room, their little kitty ears cocked, listening to sounds within the walls. I have heard the mice myself. With all the feral cats around my house, I'm not surprised that they have moved in the walls. I hope for their sake that they don't end up inside.. my cats are lethal!

Little Jeepers is particularly taken in with the mice.


I am stalling a bit longer on the website. I am not totally satisfied with the design just yet, and to make matters worse, there's a problem with my digital SLR that I think is going to be very costly. There seems to be a hex on me and digital cameras. I either lose them, break them, drop them in the toilet, or have them stolen out of my bags. All the photos in this post were taken with a digital camera that I dropped in the toilet. The flash is faulty, but it still takes photos. My digital slr has an issue with the autofocus. It's going to cost a couple hundred dollars to fix :( Since I'm broke, this will be on the back burner for awhile. I did, however, borrow our lab camera (a canon Rebel) to finish my store photos to hopefully enable me to get the website up this week. I am crossing my fingers!


Finally, let me say that the month of February was ROUGH although extremely productive. The only thing that has kept me centered has been yoga. My yoga practice has grown by leaps and bounds this year. I have practiced for a few years, but not in any serious fashion. This past new years I made the commitment that I was going to commit to enhancing the flexibility of my body and mind. I find that my practice at home (in addition to the course I am taking) has been absolutely beneficial to my growth (and sanity). When I get on my mat, I feel all the bullshit fade away, and the layers of stress fall off my body like an onion peel. I am looking forward tonight to returning to the mat, after a very stressful and long day here at work/school. Lately I have been using the Gaiam Rodney Yee Power Yoga Dvd ($15 at target). I *love* his sequences and his way of explaining how to deepen the poses. Very calming yet effective.

So with that, I will say namaste and goodnight!