mariacas

It was a while ago since I practiced bass, sure I've played a song now and then but not any longer training for a while. Its mostly because we aren't able to have band practice during the summer since we all are at different locations. And it is much more rewarding and fun to play in a group then alone. Either way it was nice to truly dedicate myself to the bass even if it was for just an hour.

Yay! I finally finished the bed set. It was a surprising amount of work. It would probably not taken as long if I had not insisted on haven buttons to close both the pillowcase as well as the case for the cover. Either way it turned out really nice. It feels nice making something useful for someone and not just a nicknack or something. I hope she will be happy about it since I put so much effort in it. At least I have progressed in my sewing and in the future I will also have access to a sewing machine since my mom gave me my grandmothers old sewing machine. It is slightly malfunctioning on some types of cloth but works in general very well. It took me about 2 hours to finish it.

Yes I have taken up sewing again. This time with my mom as a teacher. I am not really great at sewing yet but I am improving and for sort of a summer project I am working on a bed set for a friends birthday. I always work much better when I am giving away something since I get much more inspired and motivated. I also mended a couple of things this week as well as sew on a zipper on a bag that I have had for a while. It always feels like I am conducting a great deed every time I mend something. Not only for myself since I will not have to buy new clothes as often but also because I am not wasting as much resources. In today's society clothes often are made to be cheap and not of very good quality. But if everyone where always mending their clothes maybe people would rethink and make clothes that lasted instead of consuming and consuming... This week I've spend around 3 hours sewing.

After all I decided not to make wings since it seemed like an impossible mission and I know that my friend will love this little guy either way. So here you have him now with tiny arms and not just a blob of green. I really like giving away these since people tend to like them and it makes it worth all the effort as well as motivate me while the actual crocheting. It took me maybe 30 minutes to make the final adjustments.

So my friends birthday is coming up and I'm crocheting a little Cthulhu for her. I really liked making this one since I used some new techniques to make the tentacles. But I also had a really hard time making the wings for this little fellow, actually I haven't yet succeed even thought I've tried close to 7 times. I'm considering not making wings now since well, I seem to not be able to do it... I'm also going to attach arms to the body of Cthulhu. So far i have spent about 2 hours crocheting.

Either way here is a picture of Cthulhu and the little one which I crocheted.

So a while back a guy who has played bass for quite a while suggested that as a beginner I should try to learn the bass on AC/DC songs since they aren't to hard and good practice. So that is what I'm doing trying to learn “Highway to hell” on bass. As well a previous songs of course.  I practiced for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.

In the future I will probably have to practice at my own a lot more since Åsa (guitarist) and Franzi (drummer) are both in IB2 and are very busy now. I myself have a lot to do but they are definitely the most stressed. It's a bit sad since band practice always been really fun, especially seeing how we all developed. I practiced about 50 minutes.

Since next week, week 10, is a sports holiday we decided to play one more time on Sunday before everyone left for the holiday. But since the school music room wouldn't be available on a Sunday we decided to meet up at Franzi's place. This was the first time I've ever used my own bass while playing with the band (otherwise I just grab one in the music room. And it was really nice, we're getting better and better and have improved a lot since we begun. Now we have also started on ”come as you are” by Nirvana. It was a bit weird because I knew how to play ”come as you are” but I had the wrong tempo. Well after mimicking Åsa for I while I think I got it, now I'll just practice home for a while and everything will work out. Here is also a video clip from last time, sadly it seems like yet again I can't insert the video in this blog post so just click on the picture to see the video.

This was definitely the most fun practice so fall. Also we had Anders as an “guest” singer. But after playing a while we talked about seriously recruiting Anders to Super Conductivity, and it seems like we now have transformed from a 3 people band to a 4 people band! Which for me is really taking of a lot pressure, I will probably still do some background singer but I'm not going to be the lead vocalist. We filmed some this time as well, but since my computer didn't really want to work here are some pictures instead.

This week did not feel as good as last time for me. A big problem for me is both that I'm not very confident in my singing, and I can't sing and play the bass at the same time. As I had a tad of a cold and no microphone this time the fear of singing false was bigger then ever. So after a while of singing my throat hurt and we stopped playing a bit earlier.

This times practice was really fun, and it really felt like we made some progress. Something that really contributes this time was that we where able to get the microphone to work so we could finally try to play the song as it was suppose to be. Something I'm very worried about personally is singing false, since I'm not that good on singing the high notes and I really don't want to let the others down by singing bad. So I'll just have to practice!

Now we have close to finished the skirt part of the costume and we've started on planning the blue dress. Since we didn't have a elastic band at hand of the waistline we will just have to fix that next time. It takes a lot of time just thinking about how to solve the design of certain things and the thing were still most worried about is the arm puffs. In the end the skirt is suppose to look something like this picture.

We had our second practice! In the beginning we really tried to do it accordingly to the original version. The thing was that we didn't really know it well enough to play, so we screwed up before even reaching the first verse several times. After that we decided to just play easier and just have fun so we wouldn't feel so discouraged. It really made one a lot happier and gave you a chance to experiment a bit with what you had. Here is a bit from our practice. If you press the picture you can see a short clip from our practice.

So this Monday was our first time playing together. Franzi will be the drummer, Åsa the guitarist. And I personally will be both main vocalist and bassist. Since it was the first time we didn't have time to perfect it or even complete it. The first song we are going to learn is “Zombie” by The Cranberries. This is a really good song for me who is a beginner at the bass and also need to sing. I'm firstly really happy that Åsa who has some experience playing bass and guitar taught me how to read tabs for the bass, which for me always have been a mystery. We had a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to next Monday for our next jamming secession.

This one did not take to long and is still really cute, after having taken on so many big or hard amigurumi projects it feel really nice not making anything to big or complicated. I think it turned out good even thought I had to improvise making the eyes. It's a bomb-omb from the super mario games.

I've been working so hard on this Totoro, now it's finally finished and I'm ecstatic. When making it I was very critical and scared of failure and now I'm all like “Aw it's so cute!” The hardest part thought was definitely the ears, I remade them close to 13 times just to make sure they would be about the same size. All together I've spent maybe 3 hours on finishing up the Totoro this week.

This one was a lot harder to make then I thought it would be. Since it's so “skinny” it is hard to crochet evenly. But I'm still pleased with the result even if I happen to think it would have been even cuter if I had been able to get a hold of glue gun eyes as in the original pattern.

When I made my first amigurumi, I made this kind of small amigurumi bunny. When my friend saw them she said "I want a green one!", So I made one as a Christmas gift for her. These bunnies are really simple and cute, great for beginners. Although I specialized this one a bit, such as making the pattern bigger since I had a thin yarn and making the ears bigger.

This Sunday was the second time me and Åsa tock on sewing my cosplay dress. After sewing on buttons and such we finally finished on the white top part for the petticoat. We worked for maybe, three hours and next time we’ll start working on the skirt thing of the undergarment.