Online Making Inspiration

Avoiding the side-eye from my blog shortcut on my toolbar has been a priority lately. Even now I'm thinking "I could tackle that pile of receipts on my desk" or "I really should go through that pile of recipes." Weeks ago G was watching something on my computer and asked "What's Swimming Chickens?" I omitted some truth and just said "a blog." I was mildly ashamed of how little I'd done on it in ages that I didn't want him to read it just yet. Despite that, the enthusiasm continues to wane.

What has been poking me a bit into doing something, and why I fall into youtube holes at 2am, has been following a buttload of bloggers and vloggers. I've been known to binge on their previous content at times, ruining my sleep schedule for days because YOLO. After some hunting, I did find the other post I had done about other bloggers I follow, way back in 2011 (a banner year of 40 posts), and discovered that I do still follow some of them. One's disappeared while 2 others have lessened their postings (still better than me, so can't complain), but many, many more have been added to the list since then. The following is a super short list of the regulars.

The Youtubes...

HGTV Handmade

Ignoring the current pastel thing they've got going on (don't hate, I just have a natural aversion to pastels), HGTV Handmade is super fun and inspiring. These ladies are constantly doing random challenges, themed weeks and aren't afraid to show their craft fails. They each have different styles between them which makes the videos all the more enjoyable since it's something different every week. I still follow Meg's channel, Meg Allan Cole Crafts (psst, look for a Meg-inspired home decor post soon), and I've also been recently following Karen Kavett's channel, some evidence of which you can see here.

Annika Victoria

I love Annika and I'm annoyed I didn't find her earlier. This science-loving maker does AMAZING sewing and making tutorials that are not of the "you already need several projects worth of knowledge to make this thing" variety. Her instructions are super clear and answer, she's not afraid to show off the screw ups and has a wonderful instagram that makes me want to actually sign up for instagram. Thanks to her, I finally made my own circle skirt, with a ZIPPER AND HIDDEN POCKETS. Yep. I had seen circle skirt tutorials around for ages, but there was something about how she explained it that just made it so much clearer. My hem looks awful, but I can blame me for that one. I still made a skirt with POCKETS that I wore for 6+ hours on Christmas that didn't fall apart. I have made clothing. I am eternally grateful Annika, you've fueled some realistic clothing-making confidence in me :)

If you're interested in more of Annika's stuff or don't know where to start, I would recommend her Make/Thrift/Buy series for laughs and inspiration, or her Get Thready With Me series for many more of her tutorials. She also has a new series called the Style Pyle, which is a totally stealable borrowable idea to tackle the box of randoms next to my desk. Either that or it will force me to realize I should get rid of a fair bunch of the things in that box. Finally.


Ze Blogs....

Aunt Peaches

I've been following Aunt Peaches for a while now, and she's my kinda gal... *just enough snark to make things interesting. I love her writing style too, which can be exemplified in this little bit of her about blurb; "this site was founded in 2010 as a sandbox for practicing my html skills and as an excuse to make unhealthy quantities of paper flowers. So many paper flowers."

She's a fantastically and unapologetically creative woman, painting anything that isn't (or is as the case may be) nailed down. She organizes a worldwide the Valentine's handmade card swap every year, puts flamingos on everything and is currently working on a book! I love wandering through her blog and instagram, which are explosions of colour, flowers and a cat. It's great.

Atomic Redhead

One can safely assume that I'm slightly biased towards redheads anyway, but the vintage aspects and gorgeous photos were the clinchers that caused me to binge her entire backlog in one night several years ago. The blog is filled with several covet-worthy outfit posts and Janey's love of the vintage inspired kitsch travelling. It's been worth a look for the past wee while, and I hope it will be yet.

Chronically Vintage

Jessica is just fun. She has a great rotation of outfit posts, vintage ads, vintage life and resource posts that never fail to catch my attention. Even today she posted about 10 online resources for petticoats (super handy)! I had been following her blog for ages before I realized she was actually based in Canada, which just made my little patriotic heart burst with pride.


A Bit of Both? More?

Tested

Thanks to my love of Mythbusters, I discovered Tested on youtube about 3 ish years ago. I had never really listened to podcasts (or really understood the point since I'm a troglodyte) at that point, but I got hooked on the Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project pretty quickly. The topics range from movie, props, making, philosophy, mythbusting (or not now as the case may be) and a little bit of everything else. Even the horror movie podcast was fascinating, and gave me a list of movies I should avoid! I don't really follow the website that much, since at the time it was mostly techey stuff that I'm not too keen one, but the youtube channel is a lot of fun. Every now and again the podcast can inspire me enough to actually leave youtube alone for a few hours and make something. It's powerful stuff.


I am actually working on a project or two at the moment, and cooking more. In theory there will be posts in the near future here. I'm hoping that I can get some more oomph from the guys above this sentence and actually post them. The new family motto is "we can but try," so we'll see how things go.

We're mid-way through February already, eh?

I've been staring at archival supply websites for days. There's been a lot of math going on for the past few days. Somewhere, there are several teachers laughing. The highlight to this torture is that I am getting paid for it. Not enough, but it's something.

January was an interesting month, and generally speaking, a good start to 2013. The job hunt continues, but I may have some freelance jobs and part-time projects on the horizon, so that's something. I've been volunteering a lot with two organizations (actually in my field no less!), so that's been keeping me busy. Parts of the apartment are cleaner from the January Cure as hosted by Apartment Therapy, but generally I ended up ignoring it. While an excellent idea, I think a lot of the challenges were meant to be done in a day, but in my apartment could not be. Cleaning my room would, and still is taking a long, long time. It doesn't help that I received another load of stuff from the homefront that needs to find a home. Thanks Mom. That being said, the principles were sound, and I'll probably take them forward. The outbox was used quite a bit though, and on a recent run to Goodwill we unloaded several bags of crap out of it.

Goodbye 11 bags/boxes of crap!

Otherwise, January, and bits of February have been a mix of food, skating and fashion (surprisingly). A bunch of us actually own our own skates and try to get out to the fry rinks fairly regularly in the winter. At one point in my life, two or three years ago, I was an okay skater. Then I fucked up my knee, while skating. In a desperate attempt to not plow into the poor guy who had crashed in front of me, I ended up going down pretty hard. I hadn't and haven't quite mastered the art of stopping on skates just yet. Usually, at least once a winter, I land on that same knee and it makes me psychologically skittish about skating on it for the rest of the winter. It's an asshole like that. We've tried out a few extra rinks from our usual Nathan Phillips Square (for all you Tdotters), specifically the Natrel Rink by the lake for a friend's birthday earlier in the month. It was unbelievably warm that night, so I ended up skating with the coat open and just a T-shirt underneath. Until I fell on my knee and called it a night. Bastard knee. 

Hi Dan!

Also, since I'm a Ryerson Alumni, I get access to free skates at the Maple Leafs Gardens! It's the one awesome thing about Ryerson owning the Gardens! Yes, I'm fully aware it's actually called the Mattamy Centre; don't care. It will always be the Gardens. Somewhere out there there are some photos of myself and a friend having some fisticuffs at centre ice in Leafs and Habs jerseys at a recent free skate. It was pretty awesome.

Also, in the month of January, a fashion blogger I follow, Karen of CurvyCanadian, had her official opening for her brand new plus size store! Pretty freakin' excited pretty well covered my thoughts on this news. Your Big Sister's Closet is located on 3126 Dundas West in the Tdot, and she has a really good selection of established (to me) and unknown (to me) brands.

These were the best photos of the day.. little busy going from rack to rack, drooling to myself.

I did actually buy a few things! This lovely bag, and a great belt with a pair of giant gold clamshells for buckles. I also attempted to look fashionable when I went to the opening, and I think I did well. I can't prove it, because my attempt at change room photos failed miserably.

She keeps her facebook page up to date and is frequently posting pictures of new stock and some of her fabulously dressed clients. I shall be heading back soon, I gather she's planning on getting some swimsuits in, and it may be time to look at getting another one.

FOOD. I was going to get there eventually, not to worry! The past wee while has actually been filled with cooking, and some new recipes, most of which I didn't photograph! My enthusiasm for doing that lately has been low, not sure why. That being said, I recently discovered the amazing blog of Helga Von Trollop, and her recipe for Spinach Parmesan muffins. They were dinner that night due to the sheer luck of having all the ingrediants! 

 In retrospect, i should have added some garlic. Meh, next time.

With any luck, I can attempt to blog more often. Or at least on a vaguely regular schedule.

A lazy afternoon

So instead of reading for my literature survey like a good little grad student, I'm going through fashion, vintage and food blogs. Procrastination level high. Maybe I'll go to the library this afternoon to redeem myself. Maybe not.

I think I've discovered one of my old classmates in the blogosphere, specifically in 'Round Raglan Road. It's a young lady named Alison Little, and by the looks of it she's the same one that I went to elementary and high school with. I wonder if she'd remember "conversational wookie" from the Italy trip. None the less, she's as fabulous as ever blogging about plus fashion and life in general.

I've been addicted to Solanah for a while now over at Vintage Vixen. I really admire her ability to go all out with Vintage wears and truly rock them all. Like myself she's got a figure that suit the (better) tailoring of yesteryear... I'm a few sizes to big for most of it but c'est la vie. Thanks to her many, many links I have been able to find some plus sized vintage to drool over as well. I also just discovered Diary of a Vintage Girl and the lovely and charming Fleur de Guerre through Vintage Vixen. Next time I'm in London or Washington, I'm stalking them both for vintage. That doesn't sound creepy does it?

I spend well too much time on Canadian Living and Apartment Therapy. Enough said.

Pft. Like I need a reason. 

I think my next cookie project should be this one. I've had Mexican Wedding Cakes a lot, and my Mom's recipe is pretty awesome. I found this one on the Kitchn website. Fall baking anyone?