Pick an excuse: I've been a) bored (read boring) with nothing to say, b) too busy to blog or c) too exhausted to blog. Any one of them probably has some truth to it, but I'm back! And you can't make me go away again if I don't want to because it's my blog and I am the queen in these here parts.
I'm working on a new micro macrame class for CraftArtEdu with this knotted textural design. I couldn't decide if I liked it better with the focal section like above, or without it like this:
I did an informal poll and the results were pretty much even across the board, so I'm putting in both versions and everybody wins! Because yay, we all love to be winners!!
I've been photographing and editing (jeez, when will I ever get good enough photography that I don't have to spend hours editing?) until I can't stand it any more. I've got quite a bit of video for this class - around 45 minutes I think! And that's on top of the step by step still photos and written instruction and narration.
This design isn't really hard, not really. It's more confusing than hard. Or maybe that isn't the right word, either. It's fussy because you have to switch the order of the cords all the time. I thought about doing it a different way that required less switching, but then you have to have all the cords going at the same time and it's hard to pick through them and find the one you wan to be working with, so I don't know which is worse. *sigh* And that, my friends, is why I ended up with 45 minutes of video. I'm thorough :)
So keep your eye out for this new class. It doesn't have a name yet - any suggestions?
Oh, and in between all that, I decorated for Christmas! This year we put up three full size trees and we started before Thanksgiving. I was cocky and made the comment that we wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving, so we wouldn't have to "eat Thanksgiving dinner while staring at a Christmas tree". That one came back to bite me in the behind when we had icy roads Thursday morning and I had to put together an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner at my house. I tried to figure out how to hide three full size Christmas trees, but that was a no-go. Want a peek?
One of our trees is done in gold and bronze with burlap and feathers. Sounds odd, but it's really pretty. Really hard to photograph (did I already whine about my photography ability?). Want to know the fun part? The feathers came from feather dusters I took apart. They're all downy and fluffy and even walking past the tree makes them move a bit which really gives the tree a fun quality.
The tree in the family room where I spend most of my evening is my favorite - it's got aqua in it! I love the way the lights make the white tree glow and the red and teal give it a very retro vibe. I made the tree skirt with felt and pompoms to really play up the retro angle. Sorry the tree top is chopped off - I really have to fire that photographer. Here's a close up of some ornaments, though:
I love it!! The third tree is Carter's tree. None of my pictures of that one were worth a darn, but Carter loves it. We loaded on all the animated and light up ornaments and all the fun cartoon characters, so he spent hours making the hens cluck Jingle Bells, listening to Spock wish everyone a Merry Christmas and watching the tiny Matchbox car go around the track. It's going to be a magical Christmas.
So, did you come up with a name for my new class yet? (Yes, this is how my mind works - I'm all over the place!)