On Nerdy Silliness, and Some Image Dumping

Alas, I haven't been able to take any decent pictures of my growing collection of beloved pink items (a pillow, a polka dot robe, some fuzzy socks, even my hair dryer!). So instead, a pink Valentine left over from last month that I never shared~ It's only funny to a very small percentage of people (linguists), but I'm sure you can catch the gist of it without any real background knowledge on who Dr. Labov is! ;-) I know, I have a really sophisticated sense of humor, hee hee hee!

Here, a similar ling-y joke! This one is less clear to non-linguists; the only thing you really need to know is that vowels are classified as having three different levels, corresponding to tongue height, and they are high, mid, and low. A really terrible little word play, but I cracked myself up regardless! (If you want to know more about human language sounds, here's a link to the Wikipedia site on the International Phonetic Alphabet~)

Finally, a random dump of old doodles from last month. I did 100% of these while listening to the same classmate discuss his research every week for a minimum of an hour. My choices were either to stand up and throw something at him (gah! we only need a quick update! there are more of us who need to present!!) or to soothe myself with doodling. I chose the latter! xD (Oh, alright, this is slightly exaggerated, I'm not really that aggressive and it wasn't really that bad. But I did doodle while I took notes.)

I'm hoping to have some time soon to do some little artsy things, but as always we'll see..! Until then. :D

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On A Little Love

Because I'd be "lion" if I said that I didn't love you all~ ;D Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Perhaps in honor of the holiday, I will post some pics next time of all of the pink I'm loving in my life. In the meantime, enjoy the last vestiges of your Valentine weekend with the people you love, and enjoy President's Day tomorrow.

Until then!

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On A (Tiny) Update

Oh goodness! An update a month isn't exactly the pace I had in mind for this blog, but alas, we do what we can. My mind is bursting with fun ideas my hands are itching to create, but equally bursting is my planner- so the hands remain stewards of education for the moment! :P

However, here is an apology doodle to try and make amends, in recognition of your kind patience~ Of course, it follows in my bird-theme.. this time an owl! Only appropriate, since I've been so busy with school. Cheers, to learning and creating!
I hope you're keeping warm, and enjoying winter (safe in the knowledge that spring is coming, just wait and see~) :-)

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On The New Year

Oh gosh! Since I've last posted, I've:
a.) said hello to a new year
b.) gone back to school
c.) and tried to figure out my future!

As you can see, I've been quite busy. xD I worked some over Christmas break on finally finishing my quilt, but alas it looks like it will still be a WIP for a bit longer. I finished the quilt top probably a year and a half ago, I "quilted" it last winter break (tied it), but then never got around to binding it. Oops! So I'm on something like year three of working on it. !!! (In my defense, I only ever seem to really work on it during winter break- otherwise, I'm in school, or it's just too dang hot out for me to really want to curl up with loads of fabric and sew!) It's all sewn by hand, and of course since it's my first quilt I've made an infinite number of mistakes. I figured everything out as I went along, with a little bit of help from Google of course. I think the biggest mistake I made was in piecing it together. I wasn't sure what sort of stitch to use, so I used a very tight whip stitch. For every piece. Of the entire thing. Oh my! Later on, when I took the finished quilt top to a fabric store to get some backing fabric that would coordinate with the front, the salespeople were quite confused. They were surprised it wasn't machine-stitched, too! I went a little nuts I guess, haha. I just wanted to make sure it would be durable, so I did the best that I could. :-) Oh well, it was quite labor-intensive, but a lot of love went into making it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But next time, I will definitely just go with the running stitch! (And maybe even use a sewing machine, ooooh! Haven't touched one since middle school home ec class...! That could be an adventure in its own right. :D)

Here are some pics of the never-ending quilt~

A close up of the stitching (I like this picture a lot, it's very soft looking, the colors are nice too!)
Laying out the quilt after the main part of the quilt top was done, trying to figure out the border~
Front and back completed, tying completed! (I thought it'd be fun to mix the modern colors with the more quaint tying method.)
Close up of the nearly completed quilt.. bad lighting, but you get the gist. Can you tell I like color? Haha!

Another picture of the nearly completed quilt.. unbound edges, but see how thick and soft it looks all piled up like that? :-)

And here is a rooster pic, to keep the tradition alive!

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On My Very Merry Christmas

My, I haven't written in ages! But I'm hoping you all will forgive me; I was busy enjoying Christmas with my family. I hope you all have enjoyed the holidays with your loved ones too! I was reorganizing some files, trying to clear off my desktop when I discovered a fun side-by-side comparison of two drawings.

The first is from when I was seven, and is a drawing of my shoe. Note the little flowers on the shoe? So cute! Little kids always have such sweet dear little articles of clothing. I am especially fond of the movement lines in the picture; is the shoe jumping? Cart-wheeling? Who knows! I like how unsteady the date is though.

Now, a drawing from when I was sixteen (I believe), another one of my shoe! (Sorry for the poor scan; I don't know where the original drawing is either, so I couldn't re-scan the image.) Apparently I like drawing my shoe! Haha~ :-) I just thought it was cute that I had two different versions of the same item in my life.

I've been doing some stuff in Photoshop lately, but nothing that isn't either a.) for work or b.) too silly and simple to post here. I had grand plans for churning out a dozen different little projects over break, but in the end I'm more grateful for the time I've had with the people I love. I hope everyone ends 2008 well, and I'll try to post at least once more before 2008 bows out. Let's get excited for the new year together!!

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On Some Good Cheer

Well hello again blogland! I have returned, bearing a holiday inspired doodle. I just love everything about the holidays; the warmth of home against the quiet hush of cold snow, the sense of expectation, the way friends and family come together again. It seems like everyone and everything I cherish gathers around the holidays, and I can't seem to keep a smile of my face even if I were to try! I meant to make some Christmas cards by hand this year, but as always time seems to have eluded my grasp once more. I might have to take up my mother's excellent suggestion that I make Valentine's Day cards instead. With the additional time, I have a much better chance of uh, actually completing the project haha! I am quite excellent at scheming up projects, but finding the time to carry them all out is another matter entirely. :D But I think at this time of year it's most important to try and slow down and appreciate all the wonderful blessings in our lives anyways, so I don't worry myself too much. After all, dreaming is half the fun!
Anyways, so here's a doodle for you all, my dear Tiny Makers. (There were a few others, but frankly on review I realized that they're not particularly good, so I'll have to work on some more fun little cards~) Happy holidays everyone!

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥

On An Aetiology

I realized that I never gave any reason for why I chose the url that I did for this blog... I will remedy this immediately~ :) So, an explanation! I chose Tiny Made because I wanted this to be a craft blog. I like creating things with my own hands, and in general my handmade things tend to be small. I can't mass produce things, so everything is made on a small scale, both literally as in I can only make one of anything at a time, but also in the sense that I like to make things that are tiny as well. So they're tiny made, just as they're handmade! Additionally, I'm a very small person, so I was "made tiny" as well, which I thought was a cute. I also like taking macro pictures. You focus on a small detail of an object as a whole, and all of a sudden you can find entire complex worlds hidden within the mundane. Everything is beautiful close up. Suddenly you can see all the color variations and graceful lines of veins in a single leaf, or you can marvel at the delicate precision in a tiny bug. I think it's astounding.

So there you have it! Welcome to Tiny Made; I hope you enjoy your stay! :D

Love and Best,
your Bee ♥