I'm working, I'm working

its another afghan square!

only two more and the box is full and can be shipped off

meantime, the last two or three days I have spent hours taking pictures, doing research and writing descriptions for items that will be hitting my Ebay store on Tuesday, Nov 24

I'll be posting a "live" link so you can pick up a great bargin for Christmas!

Watch this space!!

Finished project!

After quite a bit of time reworking, this project is now complete.

The original bag was nice, but sort of "flat"

When I decided to rework it, I took it completely apart -- the lining came out and the individual pieces of the outside were taken apart.

Now it has an extra lining that I stitched through then stuffed in places to make the flowers three dimensional.

I added beads for the centers of all the orange flowers. The lady bug bead was added to the flap (which has a really nice magnetic clasp). The handle/strap is even "stuffed" so it is a nice soft roll instead of a flat piece.

I think it looks 100% better!

a box of rocks?

I had good intentions of getting on with the brushes and shrubs yesterday, but cutting out the rocks took a lot longer than I thought it would -- who knew?

anyway, I did get the linings for the trees cut out too

it is moving along


spent a lot of time this morning taking pictures of the many things I want to put out on ebay for Black Wednesday --- anyone who thinks selling on ebay is just a lark just isn't doing it right! it takes a lot of time to get good pictures, write good descriptions, dig up shipping boxes, etc., etc., etc.

time to get back at it

winter day activities

actually, these were found before the storm set in

on Friday we went to the grocery store to pick up what we would need over the weekend

in the ad they said there were persimmons -- I was not hopeful as all I've ever seen here are the other variety which will not work for the recipe I want to do

but they had these!

lovely

they will sit on the counter until they are so ripe that I can make an X in the top of them and squeeze out the pulp like toothpaste

we'll have one of our favorite California treats for this year's Christmas celebration!

since the weather was cold and snowy yesterday, the DH decided it was a good time to cook up the rest of the squash stash

those are the last three of the acorn squash we grew in our garden this summer

the pumpkin was one we picked up at the grocery before Halloween when they were on sale

he made a pumpkin pie out of half of the pumpkin and we put the other half in the freezer to be made into pie for Thanksgiving

we'll be eating squash some this week and freezing the leftovers

to go with the piece of fabric stamped to be rocks from yesterday's post, here is the piece I stamped with different shades of green

these will be cut into shapes then I'll use a fabric marker to put in the "branches" and these will become low bushes and shrubs in the Trees piece

since I needed to pull out all of the other fabrics I have on hand for this project, I went through four of the tubs of fabric I had sitting out in the "studio"

after two more loads of laundry for the pieces I'm working on, I have 2 small tubs (one for the Trees project, one for the Out of Africa project) and the other tubs are ready to go out to the storage shed until after Christmas

today I start doing the backing for the trees themselves

and one more afghan square complete!

I have only 3 more to do to have this box full

I'm not sure I'll have that done before Thanksgiving, but if not, I'm sure I'll have that and more done when we return from our daughter's

when I was in the store picking up fabrics and foam the other day I did get a skein of brighter variegated yarn to do the next few squares --- a bit more color is required!!

it's a rock

or actually, a whole lot of rocks!

this is a piece of unbleached muslin that I used sea sponges to paint "rocks" on

a variety of color combinations and sizes

these are for the Trees project

today this will get ironed to "set" the color then I can start figuring out the cutting and placement

and there will be similarly painted "bushes"

seeing the trees in the forest

the stitching has begun

we realize there is no such forest anywhere --- redwood trees and aspens just don't grow together in the same climate

we're making it happen in fabric

yesterday, after the washing of all the fabrics there was a marathon ironing session -- it took me back to my childhood, ironing my grandfather's shirts -- except there was no starch involved yesterday, just the smell of freshly washed, warm cotton

the fabrics I had dyed the day before were specifically for the sky and the dirt, and after the ironing and cutting, those first two pieces have been stitched together

today I hope to do some marking of where the trees will go on that, and perhaps begin the painting of the rocks on the dirt

we also did this yesterday

this is the foam for the seat of the chair we are recovering

the DH did the measuring, pattern cutting and marking -- I got to use the knife and cut it to shape -- reminded me of the hours with the drywall saw when we remodeled a house --- {shudder}

there was enough of the foam left over to make the pad for a small ottoman, so the DH has begun working on the framework for that (we actually had wood furniture legs from some previous low slung piece of furniture on hand that will go pretty well with the chair)

this morning we're making a grocery store run so we don't have to go out again for a few days -- we have a big storm forecast for the weekend

Projects to dye for

this is the dye pot -- located at long last

we have spent several hours looking for this item -- and where was it? right there in plain site!!

the last time I used this was before we left California

and we had two pots that looked just alike --- one to can in and one to dye in (yes, I'm sure this is the dye pot -- I had packed it with a quarter of a paper barrel bag of black walnut hulls inside for a future dye project!)

now the question is -- what happened to the canning kettle? the jar rack is here, but the kettle is not, and I know I was here when we moved --- it's a puzzlement!




so these were the fabrics that needed to be dyed

I had not previously used this particular kind of dye

for one thing the fiber reactive sort of dye is relatively new in the local fabric store -- you used to have to order it from someplace like Dharma Trading

the coolest thing about these dyes is that the fabrics actually came out the colors they were supposed to! (having worked with Rit dyes quite a bit, I was prepared to be disappointed with these) I used the China Blue on a 2 yard chunk of bleached muslin, and the Terracotta on a 3 yard chunk of unbleached muslin

because I will be using the blue for the sky of the next piece, I wanted it to be an even color, so I paid a lot of attention to proper stirring technique

the terracotta will be part of the "dirt" and part of the tree bark, so even color was a lot less desirable, so the fabric was just sort of "bunched" and stirred around without trying to get something homogeneous

so the dying got done yesterday then each color was put in a plastic bag and allowed to sit overnight to develop

this morning I washed this batch of fabrics (which are also for the Trees project

then I rinsed out both of the dye batches (one at a time of course to avoid cross contamination)

there will be a major ironing project to be worked on after breakfast

this aluminum foil pan is all marked up for the cutting

it is going to become the big metal panels at the top of this building -- now I just have to go through the box of gray beads and find the right ones to build all those bezels that will surround each piece






I had been experimenting with different things to be the scarves around the necks of the penguins on my Christmas cards, but so far everything was too bulky

I found these wired garlands in the drugstore

I think they will work really well -- they're fluffy and sparkly and will stay where I want them and because they are basically wired mylar they aren't too bulky around the back of the penguin's neck where I need it to lay flat

since I have almost finished the book that goes with the mystery Christmas quilt, I'll be working on the cards a lot more now

like this?

I do

the DH is working on a design to be used to make new needlepoint seat covers for our dining room chairs

this is the original line drawing

I've done him a couple of copies so he can play with the color

after he gets that to what he wants I'll scan the colored image and create a graph with my beading software (got to love all the many things you can do with something laid out on a square graph!)

yup, we've got projects aplenty!!