Love Presents

So, I don’t know if y’all got a sense of this from my nearly complete and utter lack of bloggage as of late, but this summer has been a bit.. shall we say..

FULL ON.

But it’s September now. The weather is still sunny and beautiful, but getting cooler. I can still wear my flippy floppies, but with a jacket and pants. Things are starting to wind down.

Our boss, because she is probably not even a real human being but some kind of light spirit made of patchwork quilts and love, gave everyone $150 thank you gift certificates to the crafters guild. For ya know, not going on a killing spree during the insanely busy summer. HA HA HA. But really though, it was super sweet. And we made the fucking most of it. The nice thing is, if she had just given us a bonus we could have just bought groceries with it or paid OSAP. But because we HAD to spend it on beautiful handmade items, we got some really cool stuff and it felt like bloody Christmas.

LOOK AT OUR PRESENTS!! PRESENTS!!!!!!!!!!

 

Seal skin gloves. Super soft, super super super warm, and really.. incredibly beautiful. These are now on of my most precious, sacred objects of my life.

I wore them while laying on the floor drinking rye & cokes watching Niel Degrasse Tyson explain the universe to me, so ya know.. special occasions.

 

Its like petting a seal.. no guilt, just appreciation and love!

Little wee spots.

The other part went to this beautiful 2-tone wooden rolling pen that was handmade by a nice fellow named Aidan.

These were CB’s gift. Handmade wool socks. Ultra thick and warm.

These are his special motorcycle socks. They are specially made by ladies on the Change Island with double cinching so that they dont fall down in your rubber boots while you are picking berries. Seriously, that is what they were designed for. How beautiful is that.

 

Presenting: Presents

Mail is my favourite. It’s right there up on the list of Cool Reasons To Be Alive along with grocery shopping, cheese, and winning contests. Yesterday I got a package from the parents! It was filled with, well, mostly more and angrier letters to me from the government, oops, and also PRESENTS!

A CD of pictures from my mom. Lots of pics of the fam out on the lake on the boat, and dinners, fall drives through the woods and the garden during summer, and nice stuff like that. We watched them as a slideshow on my PS3 and it was rad. CB even pretended to be interested in a whiskey fuled impromptu slideshow of family photos at 9 o’clock at night! There was pictures of me with short purple hair riding around my grams cottage on my sisters tiny motorcycle which I will treasure forever.

When we would visit my Nanny and Bapa I would usually nag them into pulling out the projector and showing slides of them with my tiny baby mom. All blonde hair and rosy cheeks, dressed up for church with little gloves on, or being a babe drinking coke with her poodle by the pool. Slides of my Bapa carving a turkey wearing one of my Nans wigs. My nan posing elegantly in front of various objects. Vacations with my moms cousin Sabine from Germany pointing at things excitedly. Some creepy shots of my mom is pigtails and knee high socks tramping around a miniature village like a 70’s Godzilla monster girl. I saw those slides so many times I probably know every one by heart. It reminded me of that and it was nice. Next CD mom, you should send me some of those pics!

My brother sent me a copy of Neil Gaimans Black Orchid which has pretty arts in it. I stayed up late looking at the pictures, and forgetting to read the words. Its super 80’s, and I’m digging it.

My dad mispelled “Joe Batt’s Arm”on the package to “Joe BUTT’s Arm” which made me laugh a lot.

But the most mindblowing thing in the package was this fucking gorgeous leather book my sister made for me.

Look at how perfect the stitching is. It must have taken her hours and hours and hours. I like the thought of someone spending hours hurting their fingertips all for me! GLORIOUS ME!

My sister makes these insane leather creations and gives them away to people like it ain’t no thang. Remember my bear bag? Yeah. Well thats not even the tip of the hard-sewn ice berg. Look what she made my brother for his birthday for his televisual bidness.

Check it out! A notepad for notes, a pocket to keep folders with his scripst in it, a USB pocket, pockets for his business cards, sticky notes and pens! I was so freaking jealous. I wanted one for me SO BAD! But with my sister, if you ask her to make you something, she gets a mental block and can’t do it. It has to be a gift, and her idea. So I didn’t say anything, and bided my time..

During that time she’s gotten better, faster, stronger.. and now look what I HAVE! I’s now one of my top most precious 5 objects in the world.

And look! It’s just a jacket so you can remove the book!

I decided to use it to transcribe and keep only my most tried and true recipes.

This is me finally using a present CB got me for christmas before we went to NZ. Its a set of Noodler’s Inks made by a retired chemist in the States that are waterbased, perfectly ph balanced and light safe. He makes them to fund his catfish noodling endeavours. And a set of colourful refillable fountain pens.  The two went together nicely.

Filling them up for the first time in over a year. It felt nice. The black ink is my favourite

My new recipe book! My old one has seen better days. Escpecially after the Great Fudge Debacle of 2013, where I poured molten fudge over most of the pages. The recipes in there were scrawled hastily in whatever pen, pencil, felt tip, highlighter, stick of chocolate etc I had available at the time so they are barely readable now. Its time to go on the shelf. It also stinks… it stinks a lot.

Superfudged. My coworkers will tell you about how awkward it was watching my cry over my book getting fudge on it. None of them know what to do. Not even a piece of fudge would console me.

Thats the fudge recipe there! Its actually pretty rocking too, that one is going in the new one.

Bear Bag

A few shots of the leather bag my awesomeface sister made me out of leather scraps. She spent $3 on button clasps and 2 brass rings and about 80 hours of sewing. She’s a maniac. Every stitch is marked, then punched with an awl, and then hand sewn with moose sinew. Its made of deer skin, moose skin, and a camera strap from my Bapa’s old camera bag. She measured my phone and computer & sketchbook so it would perfectly fit everything. Its my favourite thing.