Planner Printable: Northern Lights Weekly Set

I hate winter, but I looooooooooooove all the lights that come along in November and December. I get my holiday lights up as early as I decently can, I spend a lot of time staring at the ambient light that reflects off the clouds at night, and I hope I'll maybe, possibly, see the Northern Lights when the clouds part.

That was a longshot for a lot of years, but the Aurora Borealis finally made an appearance this past October, a little earlier than expected but still most welcome. I'd already decided to decorate my planner with light-themed stickers all through December, so I thought it'd be fun to mark the Lights' return by designing a set in their honour.

Planner Printables: Tremontaine Set

I got a Happy Planner in mid-September, and it's been quite the delight. My planner keeps me motivated and on task every day, and it helps endow my life with some much-needed colour during this most difficult of seasons.

I've also had a great time making useful stuff for it. Folders. Tracking cards. Paperclips. Charms and tassels.

Stickers felt like the logical next step.

The World's Ugliest Rug

Friends, I have such marvels to show you on this Christmas day!

I like making things by hand. It gives me something to do while I watch TV, and at the end of the process I have something that's attractive and/or useful.

Latch hooking works particularly well for TV viewing, and it results in a rug. Rugs are useful for folks without wall-to-wall carpeting, and the fuzzy ones feel mighty nice on your bare feet. Win!

There are just two problems:

1. New latch hook kits are expensive, and intact ones rarely show up at my local thrift stores.

2. There is no such thing as an attractive latch hook kit.

Two Dragons

A Sea Dragon designed by Joan Elliott and stitched by me.

I'm kind of a TV junkie. I watch an ungodly amount of first run TV--by which I mean I DVR it and watch it at my leisure--and I'm always keen to discover a new series or two I can sink into on DVD.

I'm also a big fan of cross stitch, which I like to think of as a reallllly slooooooow sort of paint-by-number. I get such a kick out of watching the picture emerge with every stitch. It's oddly satisfying, and oddly addictive.

Since my TV habit gives my hands plenty of downtime, I generally combine these two interests. In fact, I'm not above spending a little more time in front of the TV than I would otherwise do just so I can work on my latest interminable cross stitch project.

I got in the habit of calling them interminable back when I was stitching ginormous designs that took me two or three years of sporadic work, but my last two flew past. The Sea Dragon pictured above took me just under a year (with delays due to floss shortages and a pressing need to make earrings instead of stitching), while the Mountain Dragon I finished last week was a two-month job.

A Cabinet of Curiosities

When I was seven or eight, my grandmother's neighbor took me to a garage sale a few streets over. She had a passion for quirky old things and often invited me along on her thrifting excusions, partly because I shared her love for vintage items and partly to give my grandma a break from babysitting.

On this particular outting, I fell in love with a wooden medicine cabinet someone had pried off the wall and priced at $0.50. "It will be mine!" I declared. "I will do Great Things with it!"

I bought it, hauled it home (with considerable help from my older friend; the thing was damned heavy), and did absolutely nothing with it for the next twenty years and more.

At one point, I thought to cover it with postage stamps and turn it into an installation of sorts, like what Dave McKean so often built for his SANDMAN covers. I envisioned a number of tiny found objects affixed inside, each with its own story.

This probably would've been awesome if I hadn't forgotten all about it.