hello pineapples

Post no. 101

Moving sucks.

That is all.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Saturday, January 31, 2009 1 comments  

Knitting video games?

I can't decide if I'm excited or confused by this Wii game. I love knitting, I love the Wii (although, I rely on friends to get my Wii fix), but Kniittiing? I guess the trick is that you learn to knit and then knit patterns of different levels of difficulty. You start with a tea towel, move to a sensible hat, and then ... an octopus toaster cover? But of course! That is the natural next step in your knitting career. (actually, it probably is. Once you figure out the practical stuff, then you knit something ridiculous).

Anyway, I'll just have to rent it and convince one of my Wii owning friends to let me play this. But I fear it will be something akin to Cooking Mama's Cook Off, which was the worst game I have ever played in the history of video games. I suspect I will only really love the Rabbids games for Wii. Those are just plain awesome.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 1 comments  

filed under: knit, wtf

The flu: a work in progress

As I mentioned before, I'm a huge hankie fan. So when I was trying to think of things to embroider on them, I thought that I'd look for images of a flu and cold viruses. My thinking was that a hankie comes in handy when you're sick. I had trouble finding an image of the common cold that I liked. The images of rhinovirus that I found looked a lot like a ball with stars on it. But the flu looked embroiderable:


Apparently those are false colours, but I liked them and decided that they'd look cool.





Since hankies are often pretty thin, I often just lay them over whatever image I'm using as a template and then trace the image with a washable fabric marker. For this one, I drew freehand, making it look as much like the flu virus as possible. For parts that are supposed to be darker, I coloured them in dark.

This was meant to be a test run for a possible series of hankies to sell, but right now it's taking far too long to complete. The french knots are taking the longest. I might try a smaller or less complicated version at some point. But for now, this one is all mine.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Saturday, January 24, 2009 0 comments  

filed under: embroidery, work in progress

Cakes and Giveaways

My birthday was earlier this week. I frigging love birthdays. I love all birthdays. Most of all, I love my own. I don't even care that I'm getting older. The best part about birthdays is the cake.



That lovely cake is my very own "cake wreck." It's not a true wreck. They ordered it like that. The woman in the bakery at the grocery store thought it was an odd order, but did it anyway. My friends are awesome.

My plans to post on my first blogiversary or on my birthday didn't happen. Life has a way of getting in the way of blogging. So, I'm going to make up for it today with an Un-birthday/Un-blogivesary giveaway. I'm going to give away these hankies that I made for the Crafters Holiday Market:



I just made a whole bunch to sell at Love, Me. I'm a big fan of the hanky. I have allergies that are usually just bad enough to be annoying. No matter how hard I tried, tissues were everywhere and I probably bought a box of tissues a week. Since I started to use hankies, I've had the same box of tissues in the house for almost two years. But the trouble with hankies is that they aren't always easy to find. So I've decided to help the world out and offer them pretty hankies. These bad boys are environmentally friendly and grammatically correct!

Now, what do you have to do to win a hankie? Just leave a comment and tell me about your best or worst birthday. My best is hard to nail down, since I really do love my birthday, but last year's birthday was a good one. My friends gave me a swatch, made me a cake that looks like a pineapple and took me dancing.



(like I said, my friends are awesome).

The worst was my 19th birthday. Which for many girls in a Canadian university should be an awesome birthday, as it means you are legally allowed to visit the campus bar. For me, it fell on a Sunday and I was in a minor car accident the day before (suddenly slippery roads and the choice between an oncoming car or a ditch, my cousin wisely chose the ditch). To the credit of my friends in my section, they got the RA to let them into my room while I was away and put up balloons and a happy birthday sign (brave, considering I was notorious at the time for having a messy room).

Now, your turn! I'll take comments until Jan. 30 and choose a winner at random. Since I'm moving on Jan. 31, the winner's hankies will be in the mail that day.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Friday, January 23, 2009 1 comments  

filed under: blogiversary, cake craft

Blog of the Hour: Embloggery

Happy New Year! The holidays are winding down, my New Year's day hangover is subsiding, and I'm about ready to face 2009. Things will be busy Chez Pineapples: I've got a lot of work to do, I'm hoping to blog more consistently, and we're moving to a new apartment. And that's just January.

But let's start the new year off with a new post about a recent blog discovery: Embloggery.


December 9-10, 2008, originally uploaded by thirdpersonpossessive.

It's absolutely fantastic. Not only does Nicole Wolfersberger free-hand embroider the posts (no tracing, no writing it out in fabric pens), she does this almost daily (puts my lax blogging habits to shame!) and the posts are so much more than the embroidery pictured. You can click on links in the images to get a fuller meaning of the the blog post. For example, each letter in this post has a link to a different article or blog on Google and libraries.

The genius of this post is that it says so much without ever "writing" a word on the subject. It's actually kind of refreshing. Blogs that write a treatise on the subject du jour are a dime a dozen. This one is visual and lovely, but is so much more than just the visual. And depending on the entry, you have to work at the meaning. This one is a little easier to follow than other entries.

This blog is the kind of awesome that makes me wish I could think of something as brilliant. At the same time, I'm quite happy that someone else has thought of it: despite the fact that I embroider, I can't even begin to wrap my head around the amount of time and energy that goes into each post. Better for me that I get to admire her work.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Friday, January 02, 2009 2 comments  

filed under: blogs, embroidery, good ideas