Oh! It looks even cooler that way!

Yay! Fox hat!

When Mom bought the canvases for the paintings in WHO is in the painting, she had an extra canvas. She wanted to paint a picture for my room on that extra canvas However, since I was home for spring break, she figured it would be easier to just make me paint it instead of painting it herself. :)

She helped me with the background. We started by picking the colors - purple and pink and light blue (I'm such a girl. :) ). We poured the paint onto the canvas and spread it around just having fun.

Then came the boring part: letting it dry. Of course, we wanted to use the kitchen table for other things while it was drying. What's the best place for a painting to dry? On Christmas coffee mugs on the stove, naturally! Where else would it dry?

After the paint dried we covered it in glitter varnish. (Ooo shiny!)

The glitter varnish is kinda hard to see.

Then I started to design the line drawing for the center of the canvas.

My sketch on lovely scrap paper

After I had a design that I liked, I drew it onto the canvas with Sharpie. Don't you just LOVE Sharpies? :)

The Sharpie worked really well and was much easier than painting the dress form.

We liked the result, but it still needed something a bit more. So we decided to put paper flowers in the corners.

Just plain purple flowers were boring. What's our solution? Pink and lilac paint!

We made an assembly line; Mom painted the lilac and then passed it to me so that I could paint the pink. At first, she was way too slow so I had to take care of my impatience.

But then we got into a rhythm and it worked like clock work. .... If clock work painted flowers. (There were many choruses of "painting the roses red").

After the flowers were finished it was time to break out our trusty friend, the hot glue gun.

I glued the flowers to the canvas.

Danced a bit.

Then glued some more.

And viola! A finished dress form painting! :)

I added the head to the dress form. :)

So I had the painting laying on the table when my aunt came to visit the day that I left to go back to school. Unfortunately, it was upside down to her. So she says, "Oh, it's kinda cool." Mom and I look at her and say, "Um, it's upside down." She turns it right side up and exclaims, "Oh! It's even cooler that way!"

Patience is a Virtue ... Just Not One of Mine

Viki and her scarf

So my latest knitting project was a scarf for my friend Viki.  I was experimenting with a new pattern for me - although I have been knitting and crocheting for years now, I just joined Ravelry this month. It is a fantastic site.  I used the pattern for the Haruni scarf by Emily Ross.

I offered to make Viki a scarf after she admired my green scarf, and ordered the yarn and then waited patiently (not at all) for the yarn to come in.

While I was waiting, some things I did:

Took pictures of my window clings standing on buildings:

Did some homework:

 Decorated my small laptop:

 Did some more homework:

Looked up pictures of super cute foxes:

 Aren't they just adorable?

Anyway, the yarn got here eventually. And it was this gorgeous color:

So I started knitting:

In the background you can see the crazy colors blanket, affectionately dubbed "my hot blanket" (because of its warmth), which my mom made for me when I was three or four. I used to sleep with it covering my entire body - including my head. Now if I cover my head, I am uncovered from my knees to my toes - and no one would describe me as tall. And yet it still accompanied me to college. And I still love it!

The finished scarf before blocking

Since I am a good 900 miles away from home, I have some real high tech supplies:

I blocked the scarf on a Tinkerbell towel using sewing pins, of which I did not have enough, so I used a few safety pins, too. ... It's not red neck, it's inventive...

 And of course the final product on my beautiful friend Viki:

 I had a lot of fun with this scarf. And I think it turned out really well. I might make one in this pattern for myself - goodness knows, one can never have too many scarves!