Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Giveaway - UPDATE Monday, June 5th

UPDATE:  I guess no one was interested in this book since there were no comments so it will donated/given away elsewhere.
I'm still going through things art/craft related that I would feel good about passing on to someone who will truly use them.  I have this book - The Natural Knitter by Barbara Albright that needs to find a new home where it will be appreciated and used. It's in brand new condition.

Please comment to this post if you'd like to be included in the drawing for this book which will be next Monday, June 5th.  USA only as the cost for me to ship elsewhere is just too prohibitive, I'm sorry.


Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Leather journals......

Recently I spent a little time making some leather bound journals - they all have watercolor paper pages so they're suitable not only for writing in but also for painting

A gray leather with cover page of my watercolor brush design - I'm not a painter as you can tell, it is really pretty in person as I used metallic sparkly watercolors, this one has an antler button closure

A lovely dark red leather that had a great natural uneven edge that I utilized on the cover, it has a wood button. The inside cover page was a Japanese paper that I photo-mounted to watercolor paper

What I thought was black leather but I guess it's really a dark dark blue, oh well.......I used a black and gold vintage button and Japanese paper for the cover paper

A lovely brown leather with more Japanese paper for the cover page, wooden button

And this one is my new personal journal to keep over on the coast - I used one of the shells I've found on the beach as the closure. The cover page inside is plain watercolor paper that I'm going to stencil shells on - just haven't gotten to that yet.

I've got two other journals finished but still need to find the perfect button closures for them.

Monday, May 29, 2017

New roving colors

Four new roving colors from Ashland Bay, now listed in my etsy shop for sale
Dusty Rose, Mulberry, Forest and Graphite

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Peace and other things..........

Peace - don't we all wish for it these days, and tolerance and kindness. Such sadness with the latest attack. I love this peace sign fence along the harbor in Bandon - what a creative way to fence in the yard. We spent 5 days on the coast, the weather couldn't have been more perfect - we left coastal temps in the low 70's yesterday to come back over the coastal range to 92 in the valley, today it's forecast to be 98. What happened to spring this year???
 I started a new shawl while over there. The colors start out dark burgundy and progressively gets lighter until it reaches a hot pink.


 We (mostly Sam this time) did some work on the guest bath - it's now finished. I should have taken a before picture. I painted the vanity and a mirror, we put in a new sink, faucets, lighting and pulled out the sliding glass doors on the tub/shower and put up a shower curtain very similar to other curtains in the house, a sheer with shells and starfish on it with a shell trimmed valance. I haven't painted that shelf on the wall yet as I'm not sure if I want to and if I do, what color.....so it stays for the time being. I can see those coral seahorse handtowels have to move elsewhere in the house, I've got some handwoven towels that will match perfectly.
Here's another view. I found this mirror at a second hand store, it was originally part of a dresser. I painted it to match the vanity that I painted. The knobs on the vanity are starfish. Sam built the new countertop with formica and a wood trim that was painted. I should have taken a close-up of it, it's sand colors with a bit of teal in it. The sink has a rope look trim, it's so pretty. It took me a long time to find lighting that I liked, something simple and not too expensive.........we are doing work on this house on a budget. Now we're working on the master bath - sink is pulled, drywall fixed where the big mirror was removed. I've started priming the linen closet and vanity.  The new floor and new baseboard had been the project before we started on the bathrooms.

The inside of the house will be completely done after the master bathroom is finished. I can't believe it. We'll eventually move on to extending the front porch a bit and adding a deck area to the front of the house - we do have a big older deck already across the back. Then finally yardwork. This will take a while as we like to play when we're over there too............

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

This and that.........

I finally found some time to do more dreaded photography work, otherwise these scarves would get moved from hanging over the back beam of one loom to another to get them out of my way. Now they're photographed, tags attached and hung with other scarves listed in my etsy shop.
Here is the second echo weave scarf - this one has a red tencel weft. I've been wanting to weave something in echo weave but hadn't gotten to it, always put on the back burner. Our weaving guild challenge this year is to weave something new, the perfect opportunity to make time to try it out. I'll show my two scarves at the June guild meeting.


I put a warp on the AVL for my original Iranian Tilework draft. I love this draft I created and hadn't woven it in a couple years. The iridescence in these scarves is incredible. They all have a fuchsia warp, above a dark teal weft........

..........here a gold weft...........
.....and here a lavender weft.

I sewed a couple more baby quilts for donation via the American Sewing Guild group I joined in March. These are a part of our community sewing. I'm not sure what I had in mind when I bought the sheep fabric many years ago - so far I've made two baby quilts and there's enough to make two more. The polka dot flannel was from the ASG stash.

The train flannel fabric and navy polka dot was also from the ASG stash. I've got a third quilt in the works, a simple pieced top in red, white & blue, but I ran out of my leftover stash of batting so I'll have to finish that one up after I feel like going to JoAnn's with my discount coupon.

There are days when I just don't think I can stand to watch or read the news. It's something new each day with this administration, I use that in very loose terms. And the news is not good, it's disturbing, embarrassing to our country and downright scary. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that 'he' totally implodes at some point but he's such a weasel he might 'do a little sidestep' and get out of it. Yes, that's from a song from the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, very fun movie, hmm, that would be much more fun to watch than the news..........

Pet peeve today - when people say 'you guyses'. Ok, when we moved to Oregon back in 1992 I noticed wait staff in restaurants would always address us as 'you guys'. Then it progressed to a plural  'you guyses'. I didn't realize guyses was a word, is it one of those new ones that I don't pay attention to???  Or is it an Oregonian word???  So, I'm used to hearing it these days in restaurants, store, coffee drive-thru but now I'm hearing it from our local newscasters........didn't they go to college??? didn't they take any English or writing classes???  Am I wrong? Is this really a word and I'm just behind the times?

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Garden Party Quilt Show

Friend Teresa of Camprunamuck suggested we meet on Friday to go to a local quilt show - the 37th annual Rogue Valley Piecemakers show - this years show was called Garden Party. We thoroughly enjoyed the over 200 quilts on display and spending money at the vendors. I only took a few pictures as it was hard with many others there, and they aren't great since I often couldn't take them straight on, but I thought I'd share a few favorites although there were many more I loved and wish I had pictures of.


I love dragonflies so this quilt caught my eye. I'd love it on a wall in my house.


This is lovely, I love traditional looks and applique

My favorite quilt pattern - grandmother's garden (hexxies). This is a vintage quilt from someone's collection. I'm going to make myself a hexxie afghan quilt in the near future only my hexxies will be big/monster size in comparison to these. I can't remember how many pieces were in this but it seemed like it was over 2000.


I love this Dresden plate variation


I'm a dog person, I am not a cat person. It's not because I dislike cats, it's because I'm allergic. If I wasn't I'd have a cat in addition to our dog (but I'd still be a dog person first).  I love this cat quilt - there are little mice in-between the cats.


Here's a more contemporary quilt which I love just as much as the traditional designs. It's very Japanese in feel, the simplicity is beautiful.

I wish I would have taken pictures of all the quilts but that would have taken more time than I had to spend at the show. I have always been in awe of the incredible quilters in our region.  I hope I can make it to many of the quilt shows in the region this year.



Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Love/Hate relationship.........

I'm having a love/hate relationship with technology right now. My little inexpensive Brother sewing/embroidery machine that I bought only for embroidery is not wanting to do any embroidery, correctly, at the moment. I had taken it to a get together where others were using it (as a regular sewing machine) and lo and behold when Sam was working on it he found a pin (not one of mine) down near the bobbin case and a needle had broken off after it went through the bobbin case - argh.  He's worked on it and it's better but still not good enough. I haven't figured out what to do yet as the repair may cost as much as a new machine...........will be thinking on this for a while.  All I'm thinking is thank goodness I didn't bring my expensive Bernina for others to use............
Then my AVL was acting up.......but I did get the last scarf woven on the Iranian Tilework warp. They are soaking as I type. And my desktop keeps getting stuck in Explorer and I'm having to do hard shutdowns - it must have been last week's update, usually they come in on Tuesdays so hoping there's a patch for the issue. I'm thinking after 3 days of dealing with issues with computerized machines tomorrow I'm going to do something that's more 'old fashioned', no technology required.



Saturday, May 6, 2017

Pillowcases

Today I squeezed in a little sewing time and made 6 pillow cases which are destined for a care facility in town - another one of the community sew projects for the local American Sewing Guild chapter here. It makes me smile to think the elderly or ill will have these nice pillow cases to brighten their beds. I haven't used my serger in eons so I had to figure out how to get it from a rolled hem back to the regular old overlock stitch. The serger made fairly quick sewing. I'm thinking I might have to make us some pillowcases in the near future.........

Friday, May 5, 2017

12 Days of Christmas

Finally a photo of the finished 12 Days of Christmas shawl, this was handspun and handknit from fiber from the 12 Days of Christmas fiber from Inglenook Fibers. I spun them in order starting with the gold at the top which was day one. I'm very happy with my finished shawl. I knit until I ran out of yarn and only had 3 feet left by the time I bound off.



Wednesday, May 3, 2017

A bit of weaving...........

The AVL was working much better today since I replaced the USB cable - at least that's what I'm assuming the issue was for it going wack-a-do. It worked fine all afternoon so hopefully that was it, those cables do go bad. There's still the issue with harnesses not raising occasionally but I've had that issue for 4 years. In March AVL admitted that was a problem and will fix it when I (and others) send back our dobby boxes for repair. I'll do that as soon as the loom is empty.

This is one of my original drafts - a 32 H twill based on Iranian Tilework. Next scarf on the warp will have a golden/mustard weft. Then the final one will have a pale lavender weft...........unless I change my mind before I have time to get back to the loom..........

In two days we have gone from winter to summer - what happened to spring???  Temps are supposed to come back down by the weekend, I'm hoping that forecast is right as I'm not ready for summer yet, I want some beautiful spring weather.




Monday, May 1, 2017

Photography work........a challenge.........

I think photography will always be a challenge for me. Perhaps/maybe if I took a course in it I'd do better but I'm not sure where I'd fit that course into the limited hours in my life. We can't all be good at everything and photography is one of my downfalls - I can accept that.  I did get these 3 items listed in the shop..........there's still a chenille scarf needs it's photos re-done - instead of turning out hot pink, they turned out red and no amount of editing seems to help so I'll try again.


Here is one of the echo weave scarves. I love it. Since it is so dense warp wise it is heavier than my usual tencel scarves but it is still lovely and drapey and I'm happy with it. I love the iridescence in this scarf, it makes me think of peacock feathers. The other one was just washed this morning and is hanging to dry, I used a red weft in that one.


This is another one of my rayon flake shawls in silver and white. It's been sitting waiting for the fringe to be twisted for a long time. Since the other one recently sold for a wedding I thought I best get to finishing this one up and get it listed in the shop. This shawl makes me think of liquid silver, it's incredible feeling.


And here is a baby blanket - I love the way it turned out with the bright colors.

There are sewing updates but no photos. I went to the American Sewing Guild local chapter's Make It Take It event on Saturday. What a fun day. I was able to take 3 two hour classes for $15 (plus a few small material fees) and it included lunch. Many thanks to the group that put it on.

I took my small Brother machine that does embroidery and regular sewing - I only use it for embroidery so it was a challenge to figure out how to work it as a regular sewing machine going from settings to settings. I didn't want to cart my more expensive Bernina to classes. Looks like I'll need to spend some time learning all the features the Brother has other than embroidery if I'm going to use it for classes........or eventually buy another machine, maybe keep my eye out for a nice used machine to use for carting around.

I took a class on free motion quilting - oh my gosh, it was wonderful. I learned so much from the instructor and I can see doing many projects in the future using this technique..........of course there will be lots of practice before an actual project happens. I took a class called quilt as you go - it was a bit hard to follow as I had no clue what we were doing but once I got my samples made I can see using one, possibly two of these three techniques in the future, especially for the community sews donation baby blankets. And then I took a non-sewing class - a 3D star made from fabric. I have not unpacked anything so no pix.