Last Minute Pizazz: A True Story

Here’s a true story, boys and girls: 99.9% of my creative impulses take place in the middle of the night, at the last minute, when I should be doing something else.

I was wrapping my gift for my office Secret Santa and thought ‘hm…this package really needs something.’  I mean, look at it!  Something is definitely lacking here:

But what to do?  Hmmmm…Well, maybe some ribbon. And a hot glue gun.  Yes, a hot glue gun at 1:30am is an excellent idea!

Anyone who says otherwise is clearly sane, and therefore an unreliable opinion.

I formed loops with my ribbon, adding a dab of glue to the center each time to hold the ribbon in place:

Then when I had four ‘petals’ I put a dollop of glue in the center and added a shiny red button

(there may have been a daring post-midnight raid on a button jar first. No idea whose jar–my mother’s? my sister’s? Either way, the jar was left unguarded and vulnerable, and the two buttons that were the slowest and least agile and which also happened to be red were culled from the herd)

A little rolled-up tape, and voila!  So much better!

And What was in the packages? Candy, a chocolate orange, a book of the hardest Sudoku puzzles that I could find, and a knitted snowflake:

Knitting Doll & Book Box for TARDIS Day

I made this little doll–she’s about the size of my hand–for a TARDIS Day gift swap. She’s handsewn out of wool felt, her knitting needles are toothpicks with beads glued to the ends, and the Doctor Who scarf that she’s working on was knitted (by me, of course) out of embroidery floss on size 0 needles.

TARDIS Day was on November 23rd, so I think it’s safe to show her to the internet without ruining anything for the recipient!

The pattern for this little doll is from Nuno Life, a blog full of cute patterns for handsewn dolls.

There aren’t a lot of detailed instructions (Runo, the creator of Nuno Life, is not a native English speaker) but the pattern and the pictures are pretty self-explanatory.  This little knitting girl was quick and easy to make! I think it would be a good project for someone sewing a doll for the first time.

To go with her, I got a paper-mache box in the shape of a book and painted it to match the diary that River Song carries on Doctor Who:

I filled it with nommable goodies–two cookie recipes that I’ll be posting very soon!  In fact there will probably be a series of cookie posts, because I have been on a cookie making spree in the last several weeks and ended up with my own variations on a few recipes.