We Really Do Complain Too Much

So I posted this on Twitter a few months ago:

Thanks for trying to make it less obvious you had left a package, Mr UPS man, but I think you missed the point a little twitter.com/caseykay08/sta…

— Casey Kay (@caseykay08) January 30, 2013

Kinda funny, right? I mean, the brown box itself might have actually been less obvious than the doormat thrown over the top. I thought it was a silly picture to share. A few hours later there was a response:

@caseykay08 We can follow up with the center. Please email your concerns to twitter@ups.com ^SB @ups

— UPS Customer Support (@UPSHelp) January 31, 2013

It’s official, we have way overused Tweet-shaming. I didn’t even put @UPS in my tweet, so apparently they have some lowly intern who is required to sit at the computer and monitor tweets for any negative mention of UPS.

Really, is that what it has come to? Companies have to constantly patrol the Internet for irate (or even slightly amused) customers? Seems like a waste of resources when there are so many other ways to express dissatisfaction with a company, like those automated phone surveys that call five minutes after you pick up your car from an oil change or off-shore phone centers you can call to berate the underpaid employees who have no connection to your problem whatsoever.

I Couldn’t Resist

…making a bad pun, apparently. See, for this butterfly:

I used the tempera/India ink resist method to create the black outlines.

If you don’t know how an ink resist is done, here is the method I use:

1. Draw the basic outlines, mainly of the parts that need to be black in the final product.
2. Fill in the parts that need to stay white with a white tempera/gouache paint. Let that dry at least overnight.
3. Cover the entire paper with India ink and let it dry.
4. Rinse the paper under water and gently scrub the underlying paint off.
5. Let the paper dry, then use watercolors to fill in the other colors.

It takes a few days, but I like how it turned out. Probably should have used a tougher paper to stand up to the washing, but it works well enough.

Moving Right Along

I may be slightly behind on my 400 Stitches in 60 days project, but I am still clipping along at a fairly good pace. In 29 days I;ve finished 89 swatches. I may need to speed it up a bit.

Luckily, I got myself a yarn ball winder to make flat-bottomed, center-pull balls out of my yarn skeins and hand-wound balls. Much easier to deal with the yarn in this configuration. Also, way too much fun. So much fun that, when I mess up on a swatch or get a few done from a ball, I’ve been rewinding the yarn a few times.

Speaking of the yarn, I am really burning through the stash well. I have used up six colors so far in this project. According to the estimation on my Ravelry project page (which currently shows two extra colors of yarn I just wound and tossed in the basket today for the next swatches) I have used 1,628.9 yards of yarn already.

If you would like to see pictures of every swatch (because, like me, you have no real life), you can find them in this G+ album that gets updated almost every time I finish a color:

400 Stitches

You can also always see my progress on my project page on Ravelry. I’m also going to put a little bar right over in the side to keep track of swatches numerically. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go cast on another swatch to catch up.