Bracelets and a Birthday Monster

I promise I've been busy. Mostly knitting ever more baby devil hats because everyone is pregnant, and also working on one section for a group blanket project. But mostly everyone really needs to quit having April birthdays because it is KILLING me. I need to get new friends.

I made this for yet another friend with an April birthday:

Of course all I did was add the Montauk Monster on the beach there.

Luckily she knew what that was. Or at least pretended to. Happy birthday!

I recently saw a photo online of some leather bracelets adorned with badges saying tripe like "LIVE YOUR BLISS" and shit like that, and I thought, "I can make that!" Michael's Crafts sells plain leather bracelets, and, being the worst vegetarian ever, I stocked up! I also purchased grommets and a leather hole punch. I used ring blanks for the stamped badges because they were a good proportionate size for the bracelet. Then used my metal hole punch to make a hole on each side of the ring blank, punched two corresponding holes in the leather bracelet with the leather punch, then grommeted the whole thing together. I used rounding pliers for some light shaping on the badge after it was attached.

It says, "If I'm crazy, then you're boring." It's a quote from Henry Rollins, but I ran out of room so I put H.R. This was my first practice one. I promise to do better.

I had no idea how the grommets worked. I figured maybe you just put one piece inside the other and mash it with a hammer? This seemed to work! Hooray!

Confident in my amazing proficiency at leather working and grommeting, I decided to make one for my four-year-old friend Lucie. I asked her mom to measure her wrist for me. "4 1/2 inches" was the response. Look at how small this thing is:

AAAHHH!! Can you believe it?? So tiny!!

I trimmed off a good bit of the bracelet length and used the leather hole punch to make new holes for her wee wrist. (And that screwback button right there is what I'm going to search for and purchase a ton of as soon as I hit "publish" on this post. Mental Note.)

Here's Lucie sporting her new bracelet, politely holding very very still for the camera:

Check out that sweet ink. She rules.