Barn Quilt

Yesterday I took a workshop on painting a barn quilt by Suzi Parron.  I picked the pattern Ribbons because it reminds me of weaving. It's painted on plywood with exterior house paint.  The back is only primed so I need to paint the back before we hang it outside. I'm very pleased with my quilt square and would love to do more...…….will be putting it on my very long to-do list for sometime in the future.

Still for a minute.....

Here's a better picture taken this morning on our walk. She was still for a minute because she heard a dog barking off in the distance. Visit to the vet today to check on her spaying incision - bit inflamed but ok. X-ray to check for the missing wooden clothespin she munched down. Nothing showed up although sometimes wood doesn't show in the xrays - vet not concerned. Picked up Heartguard, got her dog license, talked about still feeding large breed puppy food. For being as petite as she looks she still weighed in at 53 pounds. They've got her in their calendar for when shots are due so we're all set up. Got home and placed a Chewy order - wonder how long it will take her to figure out what Chewy boxes look like...….

New family member

Yesterday we welcomed a new baby into our home - she's an 8 month old golden retriever named Misty who needed a new home. After losing our old golden Bailey we didn't feel like it was time yet but here was a golden needing a home so it felt right. Her owners are older and ill and just can't care for her any longer - heart wrenching for them. We found out about her through our neighbor Jill, mom to golden retriever Rio. Misty is beautiful, she's so sweet, she's also into everything. She's so busy I can't catch a good picture of her so here she is napping and getting all rested up so she can go 'shopping' around the house for something to get in to again. I'm sure she'll be full of energy again soon. She's a handful but then isn't every puppy. We're hoping she doesn't eat too much 'stuff' and get in trouble because she sure wants to grab everything and chew it up. This morning it was a wooden clothespin unrolling a roll of toilet paper and trying to eat that. At least she's housetrained so we don't have to worry about that. Wish us luck...…

Grown up tie-dye

I love ice-dyeing but had only done scarves and shawls up until recently where I ventured out into socks, fabric (for future sewing/quilting projects) and now a couple of tops for myself.....I think.

I love the way this bronze/brown top turned out and plan on wearing it this coming week. There was no rhyme or reason to how I scrunched it up on the screen for ice-dyeing. Even Sam was taken by how lovely it turned out......

….but he agreed I must have lost my mind when I dyed this one. These are not my colors....at all.  It's pretty but just not me. Will have to give thought as to whether I keep it or try to find someone else it would suit better.....or just wear it around the house and not care that it's too baby blue for my tastes.

In case anyone is interested I bought these tops from Dharma Trading Co.  Great place to find blanks for dyeing - it's where I've always gotten my scarves and shawls to dye. They also have tons of dyes, lots of surface design supplies plus much more. And they have super quick shipping.....for me it's 1-2 days since they're just south of me in California.

I'm in one of those places (in my pee brain) wondering why I bother blogging. I started this blog in 2008 as a way to help promote my handwovens, roving I used to sell and other creations. I don't think it did much promoting as many who follow me are other weavers, spinners and sewers/quilters. I still follow many blogs and enjoy reading them but there are also many that don't post to their blogs anymore, just to Instagram or Facebook. Will give thought to the future but not today.....too much else to do...…..

Beam me up scotty........

Weaving a scottish tartan pattern at the moment in 'old natural dye types of colors' for a secret project to be unveiled after the holidays. Using 10/2 perle cotton for warp and weft. Fun to be back at the loom, been too long, life sometimes gets in the way and I'm making an effort to get back to spending lots of time in the studio again......I need it for my mental sanity! 

This & that..........

 I've been doing more ice-dyeing...….it's stacking up waiting for me to do the photography work. I also bought some socks from Dharma to ice-dye. Here are two pair above the ice-dyed rayon/silk devore scarves. They take the dye so well - I love them.  Today I have a batch of 8 pair of socks ice-dyeing along with cotton fabric underneath them to be dyed for whatever projects may come along, mostly probably quilting projects.

 It's that time of year again to make gift bags.  I leave them out on my table to work on here and there when I have a bit of spare time.  I generally take my own bags when grocery shopping but occasionally I open the back of the car and there aren't any in there......so I save the bags to recycle. I wonder if Trader Joe's ever thought this would happen to their bags when they printed 'reusable recyclable' on them.

 Here's one of the finished bags, this is the larger size.  Yes, they aren't beautiful holiday gift bags but I like them. I do still have to hit up the Dollar Store every once in a while when I run out of my homemade bags.

Here are the cows this morning, from left to right - Gwinevere, Stan, Ollie and Moo Latte.  They are not actually staring at me, they're staring at the guy on the roof trying to pull the chimney stack out. Today the new gas fireplace install is happening although we're in a holding pattern waiting for the gas company to arrive to shut off the gas as these guys aren't allowed to touch the main shut off and we don't have a secondary one outside.  Back to the cows. It looks like the piece of property behind us has sold and there will be houses built - it's going to be a sad day when I no longer get to see and talk to the cow gang...…….and I instead hear construction work going on and have houses behind us.

Infinity scarves......

I just got the infinity scarves listed in my Etsy shop. I really love these circular scarves - they can be worn so many ways. I think I've only got 3 more to dye so will have to make sure I dye one in my colors to keep.....although there is one of these I might change my mind about selling.  

Twelve more scarves to photograph, more waiting to be dyed, and I've got some devore silk shawls to dye too...…..and some socks which are just for fun to give away.'

These infinity scarves can be found in my ETSY shop.

Ice dyed silk scarves........

Worked on some dreaded photography work yesterday - here are 6 of the recent ice-dyed silks scarves. Have other photos to edit of some infinity silk scarves.  Then more in the queue to dye and photograph. These scarves are now in my ETSY shop.

Ice dyeing in progress......

 I hadn't planned on it but decided to ice dye 6 more scarves this morning - they're now 'marinating' or the official term is 'batching' until tomorrow morning.  I can already see some of the scarf above under the melting ice - I think it's going to be a beauty...….

 This one is interesting looking, not sure if that's good or bad.....

…..this one the scarf is toward the top of the picture under the melting ice, it's going to be another beauty, I think.  Then on the bottom part of the picture there's some cotton fabric, that was white on white design, that the ice and dye are dripping over. My quilter neighbor gave me 4 pieces of fabric to try under the ice dyeing.  This one looks beautiful. Two of the others look pretty good but the 4th one is up in the air - it's a pretty big piece of fabric to be bunched up plus it may be a poly blend - it looks strange where the dye is hitting it - who knows, it may wash out to white tomorrow.

I have more scarves to dye, some shawls and even a couple tops, summer tops for me that I never got around to dyeing in the spring so I could wear them this summer...…..