It's Camp Loopy Time!

I love Camp Loopy. Yes, I realize it's just a ploy to get me to buy wool yarn in the summer, but it's a fun ploy and there are prizes. Our first project kicks off on June 1st.

Because knitting something in a month is not hard enough, I decided to up the ante this month by spinning the wool for the yarn. The Loopy Ewe now sells wool roving, so using it spin will qualify me in the challenge.

This is the Purple Mustang colorway of Lorna's Laces wool roving top. Top means that the fibers have been combed out nicely for spinning, ready to go. This one wasn't. It was kind of matted.

I've been wanting to do a shawl with color gradations, so I knew that I would be combing it out anyway, so on I went.

 The first step was to tear the roving apart to separate the different values. Working light to dark, the hunks of roving were sorted into individual stacks of shades of purple.

From there, each hank was combed, using nearly lethal wool combs. The tines are very, very sharp, and it took just a couple of pokes for me to come to respect the tools.

The roving includes both red purple and blue purple, making it a bit of a challenge to sort out the values. The blue purples just looked darker. To solve the problem, I used my camera, set to black & white, to rearrange the combed blobs in value order. See how the colorless photo helps to block out the confusing color. I use this trick with my applique as well, when a subtle value shift is important.

I want to make a lace weight, or light fingering weight yarn. This is pretty fine yarn, used for knitting shawls and socks. Ultimately the yarn will be two ply, so I separated the value gradations in two.

Finally ready for spinning, the fluffs of wool have been stacked up in a basket, near at hand for spinning.

I've finished spinning the first run of fiber, and am about half way on the second. I'm still undecided on whether I will spin the whole lot as a two ply for a shawl, or go for a three ply and make a pair of socks. We shall see.

Knitting for the first project starts on June 1st. The Loopy Ewe gave me permission to start early on the spinning, since it's neither casting on or knitting. So hopefully, by the time you are reading this, I will be done with the spinning and ready to knit.

Where I've been

Well, hello! You're still here! How lovely of you to keep checking in while I have clearly checked out.

It has been a crazy travel year for me. I had set up a perfect schedule, with just enough trips, when two offers came in that I just couldn't say "no" to, starting with a trip to Denver in January to tape with Craftsy.

Then there was Atlanta, GA, and Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas. Arriving extra early for the Texas trip, I was able to spend a delightful afternoon at the Dallas Arboretum. Oh, my, it was a sight for sore eyes, this beautiful day of color and sunshine. We've had such a dreary winter here in Michigan. These teaching trips have the side benefit of recharging my color-deprived winter soul.

With hardly a moment to catch my breath, I was off again, this time to Portland, OR. The invitation to add this retreat sponsored by Quiltmaker to my "perfect" schedule is one that I will never regret accepting. Not only did I have class after class of marvelous students, the organizers made it easy for we teachers to find time to chat.

Most of the time we work alone, flying from guild to guild to do our job. The opportunity to chat with our peers is priceless. We can learn so much from each other about the business of teaching, and dealing with the downsides of being an itinerant teacher.

The folks at Quiltmaker put on a fabulously fun retreat. Even if the next one is not nearby, it is worth the trip.



In April I was back in Denver for the Arapahoe Quilt Guild of Denver (hello all you clever quilters!), and taught for two more guilds here in Michigan.

May started with a delightful trip to Duluth, MN. Just like Saginaw, Duluth was also hanging on to winter with a death grip. Quilters braved freezing rain and snow to drive from near and afar to get to the classes. (Thank you for that!)

Helen, the organizer, and I have been playing calendar tag for ages. It has taken some time for the trip to actually come to be, and we were both excited to have the trip finally happen. She was so happy that she ordered cupcakes for us decorated with the design of the class project. How very cool is that?

Helen is delightful, and so are the rest of the guild members. I almost always enjoy the people I meet on the road, but sometimes I meet someone that I just bond with. Helen is one of them.

The students were very productive, and a joy. The chemistry was so perfect, they played along so beautifully.

As always, I have been tinkering around with how I teach my classes. I've revamped the Forget Me Not project. The new way gives the students time to get more of the project done in class.We were all very pleased with the results!

I have one more trip to go, I'm off to Big Rapids, MI next Saturday to lecture at their quilt show, and then I have a travel break until mid-September, and no other deadlines. Whoo-hoo! I'm taking a summer sabbatical. I'm not really sure what that means, other than I'm giving myself the gift of a "should-free" summer. What gets done gets done, whether it's work in the studio, gardening, spinning, knitting or simply contemplating my navel. My mother's day gift was a new hammock, and I intend to wear it out.

Really?

Can it have been more than a month since I've last posted? Honestly? I guess it would be an understatement to say that I've been busy. But a whole month? Geesh.

In the weeks since I last posted I have been to Dallas, TX, Portland, OR, Brighton, MI and Denver, Co. This Saturday I'll be teaching in St. Clair, MI. In a couple weeks it will be Duluth, MN. Who schedules these things?

The only sewing I've done has been step outs for a couple of new classes, and some mending. Mending! Hubby likes to pull the corner off of his shirt pockets. It's an engineer thing, probably due directly to the death of pocket protectors.

I have been spinning, though. It's been my quiet respite from the noisy world. It's so calming that I sometimes almost doze off. I'm making stuff that more or less would pass for actual yarn. And I've been reminded that my goal is not to try make my handspun to look like commercial yarn, because I can buy that. I still have a lot to learn. Having finally figured out how to spin fine enough to make sock weight yarn, I am struggling to get back to sweater weight yarn.  Good thing thick and thin spots are all part of the beauty of handspun yarn. (That's my story and I'm sticking with it.)

To continue my current state of crazy, I just bought a rigid heddle loom. It's just a wee thing, not a behemoth floor loom. I figure I can weave up all of this newly spun yarn faster than I could ever possibly knit it. It's another new thing to learn, with an entire new vocabulary. But I've gone from "what the heck does that mean?" to understanding the basic techniques. So far I've woven a nice set of placemats, which is sort of like buying a $XXK sewing machine to sew straight seams. Oh wait, I did that too.

Of course, all of this falderal means I now have two new stashes to make room for. Wool for spinning is light weight, but very bulky. And then there is the yarn that I've spun. My "limited" space for stashing yarn is now bubbling over into my sewing space.

The yarns for weaving come on ginormous cones. Where on earth am I going to store those? And the tools! It's a 24 inch loom, the heddles and shuttles are 26 inches long.

On the quilting front, I did manage to find 16 fat quarters to bring home from Denver. They are for a project for a special edition of Quiltmaker Magazine, which will be out in the fall. Since my deadline is mid-May, I think I'd better get cracking on that.

I think I need a fiber intervention.

To bead or not to bead

Moving along on the Of a Summer's Day quilt. Progress has been slow since being seduced by a spinning wheel, but there's progress nevertheless. Deciding how to embellish the appliques is a bit of a challenge to me. I'm not really big on glitz and glamour, but a well placed bead is a thing of beauty.

I started by leafing through an old picture book of rose botanicals, looking for just the right center treatment for my old fashion roses. Once I found the look I was after, I marked the centers with concentric circles. (A circle template from an office supply or drafting store is a marvelous thing.) The size and placement were done totally by gosh and by golly. I did make a small attempt to center the middle circle, but there was no measuring involved. The circles also varied from flower to flower.

I gathered up the tools for embellishing and set to work. Starting with straight stitches from the center to the outer ring, I used the darker variegated thread to create the stamens. I rustled up a strip of wool I had cut and stashed in my aborted stab at rug making, to create the centers.

It sat at that stage (and of course, I didn't take a picture) for several days while I wrestled with the decision between french knots and beads. I had already done french knots on the tiny yellow flowers, so adding them to the roses felt a little redundant. I worried that beads would have too much dimension and take away from the applique. In the end I realized that delica beads would be no bigger than french knots and got to work.

But now the centers still seemed to be missing something. More dimension maybe? Maybe I could use the yarn again, as I did in the basket, and stitch in a little trapunto under the wool centers.

I don't know why this little bag of felt balls was lying out on my table, but there it was. Hmmm. First I had to work through the thought that it wasn't okay to cut these little gems into smaller curves. Perhaps there are felt ball police who make rules about these things. It could happen! But I got over that.

There you go, now we're talking. The little burst of green in the center of all that red, perfect! Next I had to decide how to attach it. I could use a permanent fiber glue, which would preserve the roundedness of the center, but I just couldn't bring myself to glue something to a quilt. I know other people do it, but it's just not really for me. Besides, the bubble of felt looked too fake to me.

 So, stitching it down was the way to go. I used a dab of the glue I use for applique to hold it in place, a slightly darker green floss and a simple running stitch. I like how the stitches create yet another circle. (Yeah, the appliques are covered with glue. It will likely rub off while I'm stitching the appliques to the background and then quilting the snot out of it.)

Next step is to add veins to the petals. I've used two strands of a six strand floss, and I'm not sure if I like it. The lines feel a little too pronounced. I may try a single strand, or I may add the veins when quilting, or, I might just keep going as is. These things must be done del.i.cate.ly, my pretties!

Spinning my wheel

I've been bitten, bitten hard. Everyone needs a hobby, right? When my quilting hobby became my job, I needed to find something new to do, just so I wasn't working all the time.

I've been a fiber maniac my whole life. From four on, when my grandmother taught me how to embroider, I have spent my entire life either playing with fiber or figuring out how to get more fiber. One thing I had never done was spin wool into yarn.

In my down time I've been hanging out at Twisted Warps and Skeins, playing with their assortment of spinning wheels.There are so many factors to consider before choosing a wheel. Just as in quilting, spinning has a vocabulary of its own. While Pam and Dale tried to convince me to take my time before making a purchase, I just knew that I needed to have a wheel at home to be able to practice in a quiet space.

They had me spend some time on this used wheel, an Ashford Traveller, then offered it to me at an awesome price, and it became mine.

This is the first yarn that I spun. It's pretty much a disaster. Too thick in some spots and too thin in others, and over twisted throughout. I was just going to dump it, it's a small expense, just about the cost of a yard of fabric, and I figured I'd learned everything I needed to learn out of that fiber. But no, Dale said I had to take it home.

So I turned it into "art yarn". I've finally found a use for the crock pot that the men in the family despised. Several packs of Kool Aid, and a soak in the pot for a bit, and now I've dyed my first yarn. It's just crazy yarn, and I'm thinking I'll knit it up with ginormous needles and then felt it, perhaps into a seat cover for my desk chair. Or, something cozy to toss into Gracie's crate.

Learning something entirely new has been good for my soul. It has reminded me of how lost one can be when learning a new process, how terms that are second nature to us can be mysterious and confusing to beginners. It's given me something to be bad at, and yet enjoy the process of getting better. As I always say, anything worth doing is worth doing badly for as long as it takes.

Four Backgrounds

While I still have some embellishing to do, it's time to settle down into choosing a background. Usually I just know what I want to do, and just go ahead and do it. This time, not so much.

This is the pieced background. It's more blue than the photo, but the darker accent fabric does have a grey undertone. I'm just not feeling it. It seems as though the background can't stand up to the vibrant colors of the applique. What do you think?

This is choice number two. I love the print, but I think the fabric is just a little too purple.I fear that the purple larkspurs would be completely lost. So the question becomes, do I keep the background and make the larkspurs over in blues?

What do you think of this one? I only did a close up because the flash was washing it out. (Yet another dark and grey day here, with six inches of fresh snow over night.)

While I like the silveryness of it, it also feels a little underwhelming compared to the appliques. So, do I want a quiet place for the applique to shine, a background that truly fades into the background? This fabric would give the whole piece a bit of understated elegance.



And then there's this background.

Wowsers! I am really, really liking this. I like the linear, yet curvy print. It reminds me of a tin ceiling, only on drugs. The flash has washed out the color a bit around the applique, and I like that effect. I'm going to see if I can mimic that with pastels or water color pencils.

I can imagine following the print on the fabric for machine quilting, it would give it a tufted appearance, especially if I put a small something in the centers of the tiniest squares, like a bead, maybe?

Can you help me choose? Really, I'd love your opinion. Shall I go for a quiet or bold background? Beaded background, really?

Machine Finished Hand Applique!

At last! All can be revealed! The super secret project that has kept me busy since Thanksgiving is ready.

 

After months of preparation, almost as intensive as writing a book, I spent several days in January at the studios in Denver, Colorado, taping my first online class with Craftsy.

 

Even though I've already tons of time in front of a camera (two Simply Quilts shows, too many to count episodes with Kaye Wood and even a show with Alex and Ricky), I was still nervous. Of course I was, I have a great face for radio. But, my terrific crew put me right at ease. Even though we worked very hard, it was at a stress-free pace.

 

I'm hoping that you will find this online class to be (almost) as good as taking a class from me. (I couldn't be quite as silly as I usually am in class, I do the jokey stuff while the students are busy working. Just imagine that I'm telling stories between the lessons.) As I watched the class for the first time yesterday, I was thrilled at how it all turned out. Even my make-up looked great, but of course it would, their make-up artist is Danica Jardien, who has made some very famous people look great on screen. The camera does add weight, though, in my case about fifty pounds.

Edit: The link for the discount is now disabled, but the class is still available. Craftsy has sales regularly, so you still may find it at a discount by going to here.

If you'd like to sign up for the class, click here for a 50% discount on the regular class fee. It's a limited time offer (I'll switch the link back to regular price on Feb. 28), so shop early and often!

 

Honestly, I have to admit to being a big fan of Craftsy. Being pathologically curious, I have signed up already for about a dozen classes. These are no choppy You Tube videos, they are high quality, well designed video classes, providing excellent instruction for less than the cost of a workshop at a conference. I enjoy watching the classes on my tablet while I'm poking along on my applique.

 

For me, these classes are the perfect answer for someone who loves teaching but doesn't love the travel. I have already sent in a proposal for a piecing class. We'll see if they like it.

 

 

 



Announcements, announcements

We all hate announcements. (A little flashback to my Den Mother days.)

Coming up, in just about a month, I'll be teaching at Quiltmaker's Block Party event. It looks to be just tons of fun, with a cast of terrific characters in the teacher line-up. Click here to find out more about the party in Portland, Or. Read my original blog post to see the special applique project I'll be teaching.

Also, check out the latest issue of Quilters Newsletter's Best Fat Quarter Quilts. I have a project on page 58. It is on the newsstands now, and can even be purchased as an ezine! I'm a big fan of ezines, no more piles of magazines that have only been read once, no more guilt about tossing them out.

Anyway, My Momma's Garden is a fun-to-piece quilt and a great stash buster, my kind of quilt.





In other news, I have been to Georgia and back, visiting with the Hall County Quilt Guild, a trip that I thoroughly enjoyed. And then I spent a week feeling rather yucky. No, I didn't get the miserable cold from anyone in Georgia (there was no kissing on the lips!), but it did knock me off my pins for several days. I even spent an entire day in my pajamas, which for me is just about one step away from hospitalization. I didn't even knit!

The progress on Of a Summer's Day is slow, but steady. I've done all the machine stitching on the motifs, so they are all put together and ready to embellish.

 

I've also sewn together my prototype background. The actual color is more of a cheerful, clear blue, not so gray, and the contrast between the two fabrics is not so pronounced.

 

As an experiment, I've pressed the seams open. Usually I have an accent fabric that I want to emphasize. This time I wanted the two fabrics to be equal. It will be interesting to work on a flatter surface, to see how the light plays with the quilting design.

I'm still on the fence, but I won't decide until I've laid out more of the applique. Most of the background will be covered. What do you think? Stitching everything to the background is the last step, so I still have plenty of time to change my mind, perhaps even repeatedly.

I've added some trapunto to the basket. Using a doubled strand of some white worsted-weight yarn, I added some oomph to the skinny, upright staves of the basket. It's pretty subtle now, but I think it will really show up once it's quilted. I've also added a layer of batting behind the rim and the base of the basket. I used fusible fleece from Floriani, which hold much better than just a smear of glue. Still trying to decide if I want to add some embroidery. I think I probably will.

Of a Summer's Day

So, here it is. (Sorry for the lousy picture). All of the planned parts are glue basted. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. I used only batiks, and all from my stash. I think I really do need to add a little something more, it's not quite as sumptuous as I wanted. But I think whatever I add needs to be airy, light as a feather. I'll be playing with that today, along with the butterflies.

 

The basket design took a bit of thought. I didn't want it to steal the scene, so my first plan was to use just a single fabric and either embroider or quilt in the details.

 

 

 



When I got to this point I was really tempted to go with the embroidery. I kind of liked the rustic lines. I decided to go on with the plan to use bias strips and actually weave the basket, figuring if I didn't like it I could always start over. (Ahh, the joy of no deadline!)

 



Now I'm wondering if I made the under piece too dark, especially if I put it on a light background. That would be a pain to change, so I'm shouldering on for now. After finishing the butterflies, and deciding on the little accent flowers, it's off to the sewing machine. I'll start by stitching together the individual motifs, and then stitch together as much of them as I can, which will make it much easier to decide on that background.

Back to work

It didn't take long to trim away the extra fabrics, creating a seam allowance. The next step is glue basting and docking. I was about to leave on a trip, so I bagged up all the parts, my key pages, glue sticks and "magic wands". This well organized zip top of fun followed me to Denver, where I did something awesome, something which required lots of changes of clothing, and a special manicure, and,  aboutwhich I'm still not allowed to tell you (although others have, but you know, I follow all the rules).

My plan was to have all the parts glue basted and docked by the time I returned home.
But, by the end of each day I had used up all my brain cells and just didn't trust myself to touch them. Plus the bag was all the way over on the desk, and I was sitting in the chair in front of the television, and I couldn't make myself get up and walk the ten feet round trip to get to the desk.

 

Now that I've been home for a bit, and rested up, I've gotten myself back to work. Some of the pieces I'm appliqueing are pretty small. This little sweetie is smaller than the nail on my little pinkie. Since I wanted this project to challenge my skills, working small was part of the plan. I've decided to work on the smallest pieces first, saving the easier stuff for when my resolve is failing.

 

 

 

Here's what I've accomplished so far. The most observant will notice that one of the larkspurs at the top is leaning in the opposite direction from the diagram. I haven't decided if I need to change it. I'm also still considering a change in the large flowers, to a rose that looks more like a tea rose than an old fashioned wild rose. And I'm still thinking about adding tiny yellow flowers, but the design that fits best is a five petal flower less than an inch tall. Yowsers!

 

In the meantime, I've started another pile of fabric for a new project. It will be a large, scrappy, quilt, one with many steps, to be revealled over several months...



Project Progress

Day two of the "project" began with pressing the rounded spikey elements (I'm thinking maybe I'll call it larkspur, what do you think?) in place on the fabrics. When working with multiple values, this is how I arrange them on the ironing board, moving from light to dark. It makes it easy to deal out the pieces, which have already been marked with the desired value. It's fun then to play around on the fabric to the best advantage. I'm using batiks in this project. They are hard to beat when it comes to value variations in one hunk of fabric.

The palette has changed slightly. I've become certain that the project needs a little spark of yellow. This is what I have in my stash, but I'm not sure it's quite right. I think it means I'll need to go shopping. Oh, darn.

I've also pulled a couple of prints to use as the background. The main background is sky blue, and the accent is a slightly darker shade. I'm so glad, though, that I can wait until the end to decide on the background. I probably won't use these fabrics, but I think the colors are in the right direction. Of course I'm always open to suggestions!



My shopping day, yesterday, was only partly successful. I didn't find the clothes that I was looking for, but I did get my hair trimmed and my eyebrows done. Discouraged by what I found at the mall, I came home early and used the time to prepare the leaves.

All of the elements are now pressed to the fabrics. The greens fall into two families, warm and cold. I'm thinking that I might dub the yellow flowers as coreopsis zagreb, and embroider in the wispy leaves. I'll spend the afternoon trimming away the excess fabric, listening to The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly. I do love listening to books on my ipod.

A new project

After weeks of working on a super secret spy club project (that I will be able to tell you about next week), I'm treating myself to a special project. An applique project that I can work on with no deadlines, one where I can incorporate all the embellishing techniques I've been learning.

(For those of you who are wondering, I haven't yet decided on doing a block of the month this year. I know it was missed last year, and I missed the contact for sure. Just give me some time to catch my breath, and then we shall see.)

I rarely start with a "cartoon", preferring instead to create the motifs and then play with the layout. For this project I wanted to be a little more exacting with size and placement. Still, I anticipate that the final design will change. I'm already thinking about adding another small flower, maybe a pale yellow, to the design.

I am also predetermining the value placement, carefully marking each motif with the desired value. L = light; M- = light medium; M = Medium; M+ = dark medium; D = dark. I'm only using one fabric per value, but that might change.

Up until lately, my applique process has been all about mass production of perfectly copied motifs. Now I am tending towards cutting the shapes one at a time, adding a little individuality to each one as I cut, which I consider one step forward on the road to becoming a truly recovered perfectionist.

This is part of my palette. The purples are for the spikey yet rounded flowers. (I'll surely need to come up with a better name if I ever decide to publish the pattern. Any suggestions?) The basket will be three shades of brown, not quite settled upon. And I haven't decided on a background color. I'm tending towards a pale blue, like a summer sky.

Here are the parts for all of the roses, pinky peach to red, pressed to the fabrics (on the wrong side). This is how far I got on Monday. My plan had been to post each day's work, but Blogger has been a pill. I couldn't upload pictures. I finally solved it today by using a different browser. Geesh. Now that I know how to work around the problem, I can get on with my posts. I'm aiming for a catch up post tomorrow morning. I don't anticipate much work being done today, it's my day to shop for the new wardrobe that I'll need for next week. (I'm such a tease!)

Looking ahead

After years and years (and years) of making the same resolutions every January, (lose weight, produce more, become perfect, give up perfectionism), it became clear that there was no resolve in those resolutions. In fact, I was pretty much doomed to failure from the moment my feet touched the floor, discovering a huge dust bunny, therefore sucking at housework, and blowing the whole perfection thing in the first waking moments of the new year.

Since I haven't yet kicked the whole perfectionist thing, looking back always begins with the disappointments and failures. I know that we all have things that we wished we'd done better on, but I feel that way about everything. Everything. Who doesn't relish an opportunity to revisit one's shortcomings? This time of year generally makes me a little crazy (er).

Instead of a resolution this year, I am going to set a couple of goals. They are just kind of nebulous, impossible to prove, and therefore fail, sort of goals.

#1: Be kind to myself. I am my own worse critic, and I can be vicious. I say things to myself that I would never even consider saying to another person. I've been working on this for a while, and I'm making progress (see what I did there?), but I'm renewing this goal for this year. (See, that? I did it again! I am renewing my subscription to this goal, I didn't fail!)

#2:  Be a little selfish. This will be a hard one. I have been driven by my responsibilities since I was a little kid. Being the oldest of six girls meant my care taking days started early. I have never been responsible for just myself. Now that the boys are launched, and I'm over the empty nest, it's time for a little self indulgence. It's mostly goofy stuff, like buying premium ice cream because it tastes better, or a pair of shoes just because they're cute.

#3: Give myself permission to play. Another toughie. What I really should say is give myself permission to play without guilt. This goal is closely linked with #2. Playing feels frivolous and wasteful, but I know that it is necessary for creative growth. Oh, wait, I think I just turned it around into a work related thing, which is clearly not play. Yep, I think it may even take a whole year to understand what play is.

I always admire folks who can make a resolution, and keep it. Does it work for you? Is there something magical about the turning of the calendar that makes the promises easier to keep? I'd love to hear about your plans/goals/resolutions for this year. Meanwhile, I think I'll go vacuum my bedroom, the dust bunnies are having a party in there.

A quandry

One of the high points of my trip to Houston and Quilt Festival this year was the opportunity to take a two day class with Elly Sienkiewicz, the grande dame of applique. I have admired her work for so long, and looked forward to spending some time with her.

She is a delightful teacher, gentle, calm and quiet. She clearly loves what she does. Our class project was quite ambitious, a clipper ship with a wreath of flowers. I went into the class with every intention of following Elly's processes, how else could I learn something new? While Elly did have some strategies that were new to me (especially the embellishment with the oil pastels), it didn't take long for me to realize that the basic technique was pretty much same old, same old. Luckily Elly isn't one of those hideous "my way only" teachers. On the contrary, Elly frequently repeated that each of us could feel free to use the technique that has given us the best success. Score!

 

Here is my class project so far. Since the pattern came directly from one of her books, I printed out the pattern onto Wash Away Applique Sheets before class. The masts are needle turned by hand. (See, I can do it!) It reminded me that tiny needles and even tinier stitches aren't the fun part for me. I quietly slipped over into glue basting and made terrific progress.

 

I learned some great things with the project. Elly showed us how to use Craypas (oil pastels) to add shading to our applique pieces. I love this! I've used it on the sails, and a couple of the roses. I've learned that I can glue baste teeny tiny pieces. I've fallen into creating designs that are simple and large, to make the project more accessible for beginners. Sort of instant gratification stuff. Now I am completely intrigued by getting small. Those stripes on the flag are about an eighth of an inch wide, and glue basted individually!

 

 

 

So, here's my quandary: do I finish this project? Even though I've made a space for it, I have added only two small roses, the rest was completed during class. I've always wanted to do a Baltimore Album style project, so here it is. I have been following the pattern pretty faithfully, and that has been a challenge for me. It's not yet stitched to the background (well, except for the masts), so I can move it to a new background, or recenter it, or whatever.

 

I tell my students if they have learned everything they wanted to learn from the project then feel free to toss it. Of course, if they are loving it, then have at! We just don't need anymore obligation stuff in our hobbies.

 

This is a side project from a super secret project that needs to be done in a month. I fear if I put it away it will become a permanent UFO. Help me here! Do I continue to work on it, or call it good and toss it away?



The beginning of Christmas

Every year, ever since the boys were little, we've kicked off our Christmas celebrations by putting up the tree on the first Sunday of Advent.

 

When Kent and I were first married, we were totally broke college students. When our first Christmas rolled around, we had nothing, no lights, or decorations. I realized then what made a Christmas tree special were all the memories attached to the ornaments. We managed to put together a small tree, with a single strand of lights (remember those big, hot bulbs?), garland made from computer punch cards (now you know how really old I am), and little birds woven out of ribbon.

 

As the boys came along, I wanted to build a Christmas legacy for them to take to their grown up homes. Each year the family went ornament shopping, each boy picking out an ornament that had meaning to them.

 

Over the years they picked some pretty goofy stuff, furry icicles, smiley faces, ice cube snowmen with ice augers through their heads. It was very interesting to watch as their tastes changed and they began to look more long term at their collections.

 

 

Of course, we have continued the tradition with the grand kids. We are lucky to have Bronners nearby, which is only the largest Christmas store in the world. It is an amazing swirl of lights, and colors, and sounds all year long.

 

They have the very best Santa, ever. I do believe that he is the real Santa, all others being this fellow's intrepid helpers. He is so kind and gentle that he charms even the shyest child. That said, Nicole, being a two year old and tired, wanted nothing to do with Santa.

 

 

 

Christmas 2012: (clockwise) Nicole (2 1/2  years old), Amanda, Nathan, Santa and Alex (5 1/2).

 

Joy, joy, joy!



Gracie takes me for a walk

It's been six weeks since Gracie came to live with us. She is just a couple of days shy of three months old. She makes me laugh, a lot. She's making great progress on housebreaking, but she still hasn't figured out a way to tell us when she needs to go out. Or, perhaps, we haven't figured out when she's telling us she needs to go out.

I've been outside more in the last six weeks than I was all last summer. (It was hot, super hot, and I mostly hid out in the ac.) And, surprise, surprise, it is good for me, just like the doctors have been telling me.

 

We have this land, not quite fifteen acres, that has lain fallow for decades. From the very first summer we moved here, Kent has cut walking paths in the field. It's lovely to watch the seasons change, savor the wildflower blooms, enjoy the rustle of the tall grasses. But I'm a big scaredy chicken, there are snakes in the field. Okay, so they are just garter snakes, and mostly no longer than my forearm, they are snakes. I'm with Indiana Jones, anything but snakes!

 

But now that I have Gracie, the wonder dog, (and the snakes are all hibernating), we have been enjoying our daily walks through the field.

 

 

 

These trees weren't even here when we moved in, almost twenty years ago. Slowly what used to be a fallow field is becoming, once again, a forest.  While Gracie is busy playing food/not food, I am also busy enjoying the sunshine, and studying the way shadows give dimension to a monochromatic landscape.

 

 

Gracie has changed my life. She makes me so happy, even when she is being her destructive puppy self. But how on earth do you look at that face and stay angry for long? Sure, some days I suffer from puppy fatigue, but she's learning so fast, and wants to please. We'll get there, Gracie, we'll get there together.