Bad Habits and Good Purses

I have a horrible, disgusting habit of biting my lower lip. Not in a cute, Lolita-ish sort of way either (although I don't think a 37-year-old woman can ever be Lolita-ish, however short I may be). The kind of biting I do results in lots of dead, dry skin on my lips and cancre-type sores on the inside of them. This is too much information, isn't it? I decided that I must stop doing this, so last night I told ZMrK two things:

1. Whenever I get the urge to bite my lip, I need to put chapstick on. One of the reasons I keep doing it is because they are dry!

2. Whenever ZMrK sees me biting my lip, I owe him $1.

I haven't had to fork over any money yet, but I have caught myself doing it a couple of times. Stupid lip. Stupid teeth.

It doesn't help that I feel like caa-caa lately. Just when winter is truly over and I am getting over my Seasonal Affective Disorder (this year's was a real doozy, kids), the pollen shows up. I'm still tired, but it's not the same kind of tired as the tired I get from SAD. I am sniffly, though, my eyes itch, my throat is scratchy and my throat glands are swollen and sore, and I am always thirsty. But I have more energy and I feel less depressed. Maybe in a few weeks the pollen will be gone and I'll be back to normal, whatever that is.

I wanted to post more about purses. The other night, Blogger was down for maintenance so I posted several things to Craftster. Among them was a close-up short of the turtle appliques from the red corduroy bag I posted yesterday. . . this is to make Catherine even more jealous than she already is. ;-)

I have other plans for this turtle fabric . . . ZMrK wants one for an applique to cover the Stussy logo on a thrift-store jacket he bought. It's a great jacket, but he hates logos! I also want to combine it with denim for more purses, and maybe some zippered pouches and wallets. Hopefully they will come out good and sellable, because I really don't need more purses and wallets.

I also posted a purse I made in MassArt's Imaging on Fabric class back around 2000:


The fabric is some sort of crushed-velvet that I believe I got at North End Fabrics (which was not in the North End, but in Chinatown) before they closed (I'm still sore about that one). It's thicker, so i think it is upholstery fabric. The picture is a great technique I learned that I would love to start doing again called Polaroid Transfer. My dad has about 4,000 slides from the 1950s - 1980s. This is from a picture he took of my mom in the late 1950s, when they were dating (she was about 19 or 20 years old here). I have a Polaroid printer that belonged to my dad that can turn slides into prints -- the trick is to open up the print before it develops, put it face down on a piece of fabric (white cotton preferably), go over it several times with a roller (a braiser? Something like that. . . I used a rubber roller with a handle that i've used to flatten polymer clay), and you have an image right onto the fabric. I put the image on the front of the purse (probably using fusible interfacing, but I don't know how knowledable I was back then), and hand-beaded the border.

Here's a detailed picture of the image with the beading. It's not crooked on the purse; the purse was hanging at an angle when I took the picture, so it came out crooked.

The beading took me about 10 hours to do. I watched a lot of movies while working on it, one cold winter. Each corner has about a dozen cobalt blue larger seed beads, and the rest are these irridescent, multi-colored seed beads. All in all, I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The purse is on the smallish size, but I still use it on nights out when I only need to carry a few things.

I know everyone is waiting to read that I made myself a Tokay purse just like the one I made for the Reptile Lovers swap. And I did!!! I used it a couple of Saturdays ago at the reptile show in Manchester, NH, but didn't get the reaction I had hoped for to it. A milk snake tried to crawl into it, however. . . at least someone liked it!! Without furthe adieu, here are some pics of it:

I made little pockets on the size (big enough for the chapstick I need to apply every 5 minutes or so!), and put my Zanti Miss Knit label on the pocket that would face the world. . . good technique, right??? I really love the bug fabric I used for the lining. I used the last yard I had of this for one of the pillowcases I made the other day. . . the remaining scraps I have may become appliques.

The purse is HUGE. More of a tote bag than a purse, I must say! It sure comes in handy while knitting socks -- I was able to carry all my usual purse-stuff in it, along with my project AND my notions bag! Woo hoo!!!

I'm sure you've noticed the time of this post -- I'm covering reception at work. For some strange reason my profile will not load up here, so I can't access my work email or iManage (the system we keep our documents on). I usually browse Craigslist for homes in Central Florida (where we hope to move soon), or browse eBay for vintage patterns, yarn, or vintage clothes, but today I decided to be productive (at least for my own means), and blog. I've been up here for 40 minutes and the phone has not run ONCE.