Giveaway

I'm slowly going through stash in my studio and finding homes for items I know I'll never use. I'm being overcome due to too much stash.......much of it I'll never use.  I've found homes for some things here local but would like to offer some up on my blog over the next few months. So, here's a holiday giveaway.

I was gifted with this sashiko pillow kit from a Japanese business associate of my husbands over 15 years ago (the president of that Japanese company also gifted me with a wooden box of bits & bobs of Japanese fabrics, some I've used, others I will use in the future). Anyhow back to this kit - the only reason I have not stitched this is because I'm not a blue person, it's an incredible deep shade of indigo. Instructions are in Japanese but it's pretty self explanatory and details on how to stitch sashiko can be found on the internet. It includes the fabric for the front and back of the pillow (front printed, back plain), a zipper, the thread, a needle and thimble.......and instructions in Japanese.

If you're interested in this kit and live within the US (due to postage costs for me outside the states) please comment to this post and make sure I can reach you either through blogger, by leaving your email address or checking back on my blog December 7th to see if you're the winner of this giveaway. I'll be using a random generator to pick the winner from those posting.  I'm hoping someone will be interested in this kit, it's really nice, it just won't get stitched here.

The agony of defeat.......

I've had two boundweave kits from Sweden for years, so many years I can't even begin to remember although if I had the inclination I could look it up in my records, year by year......not going to happen. I have never bought weaving kits but these were so cute, one was a farm theme with the farmer, farm critters and produce........the other I think (???) had to do with trees, mountains and whatever.

In my effort to go through things deciding what to keep, what to gift, what to sell I went looking for these kits so I could pull out the instructions and translate the color names to English. I know how to weave boundweave, there were graphs for the treadling/color order so all I really needed was to figure out epi from metric and translate color names. Today I pulled the kits out - there are two big bags of wool and two linen warps. Instructions - argh, no where to be found!!!!  I'm not one to misplace things and in this case I would have kept the instructions in the big bag with the kits. I looked all over on the shelf hoping they just fell out of the bag but no luck. I looked through every piece of paperwork I could find, no luck. The only thing I can think is that someone offered to translate the instructions for me and never gave them back and it was so long ago who knows who might have volunteered that..........I will be asking a few of my fellow weavers but I'm not optimistic.

So, back up on the high shelf these kits go until I can hopefully unearth the instructions. If not there is a lot of wool that can be used for some project or another. I don't even have the name of the company in the bags of yarn to contact them........if they're still around, if they still have these kits. Sure glad I didn't pay full price for these - a local weaver (now out of the area) used to sell all things Swedish having to do with weaving and ordered them for me at cost.  These were to be the next projects to weave while on the coast.

On the upside while going through paper I did put a tremendous amount of it in the recycling cart.

Nothing creative here to show as I'm still finishing up holiday gifts and trying to find other gifts hidden throughout the house during the year, I'd love to get them in the mail this week.

Earlier in the week I finished reading The Boys in the Boat - loved it and would recommend it especially for those who love historical books.

I hope everyone had a wonderful turkey day. We didn't eat at home but I did make a turkey breast yesterday so we'd have leftovers for sandwiches, pot pie and soup.

Basking in the sun

No, it was not me basking in the sun although we did have some sun the past 4 days in-between squalls coming in off the ocean and even a big thunder/lightning storm one evening. We escaped to the coast for some R&R.......walking the beach, a lot of reading, making some ornaments, going to a community concert and dinner out with friends. Of course as always 're-entry' sucks - so much to get done in the next week with finishing up gifts, getting some mailed, putting together our holiday cards, etc. I'm anxious to get back to the loom and perhaps I'll start having some creations to share on the blog but right now everything I'm working on are gifts which can't be posted.

So, back to the basking in the sun - these two sea lions were enjoying using a rock in the water as an anchor to relax in the sun. They were less than 20 feet from us on the shoreline and didn't seem too concerned although they did keep an eye on Bailey opening a slit of an eye to check on what he was doing every once in a while. I think they figured out pretty quickly that Bailey, although a water dog, is afraid of the water and wouldn't be swimming anywhere close to them. If I had brought my camera along I would have gotten a better photo than with my phone.

I think this week is the one where we should be buying lottery tickets as we saw 7 rainbows in 4 days - that must be a record. And when driving home yesterday we chased the end of a rainbow and drove right through it. I'm thinking seeing all those rainbows must be a good sign hence buying lottery tickets.........but will I actually go to the store and buy them is another thing..........

In mourning..........

We have been in mourning here since election night........even Bailey is down in the dumps over it. I won't say much because I could go on and on but I'm worried and very scared for our country for the first time in my life. In the past if my candidate didn't win I still had high hopes that the new president would do his best for the country and we'd be ok........I don't feel that way this time. I have fear for the hatred, bigotry and intolerance we've seen this past year and continue to see. I worry about new policies which will be detrimental to all nationally and internationally. Thumbs up to all those demonstrating but please, please, keep it civil, don't lower yourselves or give in to the hatred yourselves. And for those of you that didn't make the effort to get out and vote - shame on you. Ok, that's all I can say about that because it will give me an anxiety attack.  (note - any nasty comments, on either side, to this post will not show up on my blog - my post is not meant to open up any political discussion)

So, on to a complaint - Windows 10 - argh. Once again on my laptop (which thank goodness isn't my main computer) all my bookmarks/favorites were lost in an update last weekend. This is the 3rd time this has happened since spring, supposedly in June they fixed the glitch......not. Luckily I only use this laptop when traveling so it only has a small number of favorites and I got smart last time and made up a document with the links for them. If I had Windows 10 on my main computer I would be grouchy every single day. I hate Windows 10, there's always some snafu happening with it.

I'm trying to work on holiday gifts so nothing can be shown here on the blog yet. I'm anxious to get them finished up and move on to some new weaving.  Has anyone else found a way to get more hours in your day??? 

Slowing down.......hah!

Trying to slow down life and find more time to be creative just seems to elude me. These next 2 weeks area jammed packed and very little of it is earmarked as creative time. Some of it is fun but I will still be a grump-head by the end of the month.

We spent the past 4 days on the coast for some downtime. It was great. I did get the loom over there warped up with some more cottolin towels in a basket weave/herringbone pattern. After this warp there will be only bits & bobs left on around 70 cottolin spools........they'll be good for future inkle or card weaving. I've never used cottolin for either of those weaves so it will be fun to see how the bands feel made out of cottolin.

Does anyone out there watch Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel? Well, recently they had a spin off show called Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove. This show is all about the dungeness crab fisherman off the Oregon coast. These fisherman are based in Newport up the coast from us but they fish up and down the coast from there. This past spring there were a couple tragedies just 20 miles up the coast from us with lives and boats lost - those are talked about on the show. While the season was airing in September we had a tragedy right in Bandon with 3 lives lost and shortly after a boat couldn't find it's way in the fog and ran aground - we were there that morning but didn't hear any commotion when it happened. In this picture, which I took Friday morning, at low tide, you can see the waves coming in, they were huge and no boat could get in or out in-between those jetties. That's where a boat went down the later part of September where 3 lives were lost. The boat that ran aground was just on this side of the jetty. I sure wouldn't want to have to go in and out in a fishing vessel. I think of the fisherman that do this on a daily basis to make a living for their families and provide us with yummy crab and other delicacies - stay safe out there.

Many thanks for the comments and numerous emails about continuing my blog. I still have not decided if I will give up blogging, in the meantime I'll just slow the posts. I have no deadline where I have to make this decision so I won't be rushing in to it.

Will everyone else be as glad as I am after this election is over? I am so done with it, so tired of the negativity, so tired of the coverage, the commercials. I'm hoping my candidate wins as it scares me if the other one does what will happen to this country. No matter who wins there will be unhappy people in a country which is now so divided - there will be a lot of healing needed............