Monkeying around......

he's pretty cute!

last night I got him all stitched together, knit up his hat and stitched it to his head

still need to finish knitting his vest and then create his wings, but it's coming right along

this could be labeled "rot is beautiful"

both pictures were taken in our garden this week of a large rhubarb leaf that is slowly returning to the earth under the plant

the colors are amazing -- and I think these may become a piece of art one of these days

the other issues I've been dealing with this week have been "rot" but NOT beautiful -- spending uncounted HOURS on the phone trying to get medical procedures set up for the DH through every possible obstacle has been totally frustrating

my plans for getting any real art work done have been eaten up by administrative nonsense ---- GRRRRRRR!!!

as of noon time today I have decided that it is all just going to wait until next Tuesday afternoon because it is seriously making me CRAZY

I'm headed into the studio to get something done

not exactly art

one of the things I've been fussing about is the state of my website

the original core of this thing was originally written about 15 years ago, and has undergone many permutations since then

the problem is -- it LOOKS like it's 15 years old

the whole "look" of web pages has so changed in that time that the site is almost useless

but I'm reluctant to let the domain name go because I'm concerned what might pop up with my business name on it if I do

so, I need to make it look better -- but I can not justify spending a lot of money on a new program to do this with -- and I don't really want to spend a long time learning a new program either

the other day, after a conversation with my daughter about this issue, I went snooping around in the programs that I already have on my computer

one of them is Publisher 2003

and I have not used it much -- it's just part of the Office Suite that I have (and I use Word and Excel, which are also part of that, a lot)

so I did what I've been doing since the early 1980s when I saw my first "personal computer" -- I went looking for a book

I found a copy of this particular book for 37 cents (I love Amazon for this purpose)

so for the next few days I'll be stepping through the text with the program open to see if I can get comfortable enough with the program to create a whole new look to my website

I'll let you know how that goes

so while I'm not talking about art, I'm taking this opportunity to rant about something that bugs me

this headline was on the FRONT PAGE of the local paper yesterday

read it closely now

"Suncor airs on side of caution"

wait --- AIRS?

don't we mean "ERRS"?!

OY!!

I know that the paper no longer gets set in lead type (yes, I'm old enough to remember when it did!), that it gets set much the way I'm writing this blog right now

and they use spell check to catch the spelling errors

but obviously the idea of proof reading for content has fallen by the way side

unbelievable --

fooling around with the fence

we had big wind the first of the week (which of course has been followed by the instant HOT of summer)

it took out an entire panel of the fence

we'd planned to work on this later in the summer on a weekend that we would have help

heh -- not so much

so yesterday it was off to the hardware store to get 2x4s and cement

hopefully by the end of this week we'll have this under control again

so, it's putting serious kinks in my plans for doing other things, but we'll survive

the pointy petals of the columbines on the Wild About Flowers piece are complete and last night I managed to get all of the round petals stitched together (those have two sides so they can be attached only at the base of the petal), and turned and the shading done with the marker -- all ready for me to start attaching them -- hopefully today sometime

have almost finished the sleeves of the Christmas sweater

time to get to that fence work before it gets too hot!

Nothing to see today

I really did work on some projects yesterday, between loads of laundry and doses of big time antibiotics

I just forgot to use the camera

DUH

give me a break, the tooth is still sore (although I'm not having to take Oxycodone just now), eating is a challenge, my brain isn't working well

(that's my story, I'm sticking to it!)

ok, so here's what I worked on:

one more complete and part of another gold and blue bead

quilting on the turtle quilt (I'm on the home stretch -- I see binding in the near future!)

more fins on the Hoffman Challenge fish (this one is taking twice as long to do as the others did because of the metallic thread couching, and I promise to take an "in process" picture soon)

knitting on the afghan Christmas present

knitting on charity mittnz

knitting on charity afghan square

and I started working on the Wild About Flowers design which is the special contest for the State Fair in August -- I'm using the technique I learned doing the fish wall hanging -- sort of -- in process pictures of that one soon too

and after almost two months of "crutching" my computer set up, the desktop computer has been officially deemed "DEAD" and I have succeeded in getting a USB hub set up to my laptop so I can use my printer AND my scanner AND the external hard drive AND the zip drive AND.... well, I'm an extremely happy camper on this point, because I use that printer/scanner combo to aid in a lot of my art projects, and being without it has been a real pain in the butt

we're having a snow day today -- we got about 7 inches of heavy wet spring snow last night and it was still lightly snowing this morning -- we're going no where today --

guess I'll work on projects!

Really done

unless, of course, I win the whole bundle at quilt guild

here is block #5 of the heart song pattern

this black and white print is really cool -- sort of makes your eyes dance back and forth between seeing the stars and seeing the circles

I got a quarter yard of it, so I'm hoping to put some of it to use in one of the Out of Africa pieces (which I really am going to work on again soon -- I hope!)

we're all ready to go to guild meeting, and it's not until next week!

back in November when I was working on ears for the Seasonal Rabbit, I never did find any fabric that looked like St Patrick's Day

when I got the stuff for the flower project the other day, I found this, which I think will be suitable -- whipped this up yesterday in about 10 minutes, and soon it will be in an envelope on it's way to the otherwise ear-less for the holiday rabbit

new cameras are a good thing/bad thing sort of deal

I learned early on to back up my computer files -- especially my photos because so often they simply can not be replaced

each month I write all of my picture files to a CD and store it in a labeled sleeve

uh, except this month, when I started to do that I realized that 737 MB of photos were just not going to fit on a 700 MB CD --oops!

the deal is that the new camera has a lot more mega pixels, which means each photo is a much bigger file

I did some rearranging of files, moving the "copy" files that I created of documents to a different place (these ordinarily wouldn't even be there if my scanner was up and working, but never mind, that's a whole other rant!)

mission accomplished (and I'll keep that fact in mind for future reference)

time to get to that laundry

another Heart Song block

and the corners of this one do NOT look wonky!

on closer examination, the fabric appears to be printed slightly off grain, and because it is such a linear print, it really showed

I like this one much better --- truth be told, I like the red fabric in this better too

if I were to choose another black and white print, it would be one that was more "random"

so this one will go to the quilt group and I'll have to figure out what I'm doing with the first one

and I may do one more (or even more than that) before the end of the quarter when these go in for the drawing

in an update on my computer issues

as I posted yesterday my laptop computer has been infected with a virus -- one so severe that I can't even pull up the Task Manager -- so it will be a while before I can use it to do anything -- including downloading pictures from my new camera

yesterday I went to the local camera shop hoping for some help on figuring out why my desk top machine doesn't want to play nice with the new camera

the guy there suggested this handy little gadget -- it takes your camera's SD card and plugs it into a USB connector so you can use any computer to download pictures, music, etc

uh, except the desktop computer doesn't "see" this either, so I tried to download a driver for it (which my version of windows shouldn't need, but hey, it is windows), and I can't unzip and install the file

hmmmm, things are not happy here in computerland

so the work arounds are in place -- my family computer doctor is mailing me a CD with the necessary "scrubbie" to clean up the laptop, I'll be backing up all the files from my desktop to an external hard drive so we can reconfigure it, and I'm back to using my old camera until one or the other computer is fully functional again

after last week's cell phone failure, I'm about ready to gather up all of the technology in the house to a large bag and toss it out the window

grrrrrrrrr!

we interrupt this project news

for a short rant

this is a DEAD phone

yesterday morning I discovered that it's speaker had gone out

it's not 2 years old yet, but I guess I shouldn't whine too much since this is the phone that somehow got wet about a year ago and was miraculously resurrected

so I went to the local verizon store -- and was given 3 unacceptable choices: pay to have it repaired (about $50); buy a new phone at retail (about $400 for the one I really want); or add another line to get a new phone (which would cost me $9.99 a month for 2 years before I could cancel it -- about $240)

that last one was the real kicker -- GET REAL!!

because we keep an old phone in house for "just in case a phone dies", I could select option "E", none of the above -- I'm now back on a phone that doesn't do pictures (bummer), but at least my headset works on it (sort of) and I can still text

we have a line on our family plan that is eligible for an upgrade on April 6 when I can get the phone I really want for a price I'm willing to pay (I'll be counting the days!)

after all the phone chaos died down I actually did get some work done

here is the progress on the beading work

I printed out an extra sheet of this scan so I can do some drawings of what I'm thinking about doing for fringe -- just to see if I even like the look of it on paper at least


the first of the aspen trees for the Trees project is now ready to be painted -- my idea of lining it and using some quilt batting inside to give it depth worked pretty well --- this was the tree furthest away, so it has the least thickness --- I'll be working on tree number 2 today

the sashiko work is coming along --- I ordered 24 skeins of white embroidery floss today (at 8.8 yards per skein from which I actually get 26.4 yards since I split it into 2 threads to do the stitching) I've already used 2 skeins (that I had on hand) and have 2 more here that should keep me busy until the order arrives toward the end of next week --- if I actually use all of it there will be 739 yards of thread in this project (WOW)

started another pair of mittnz last night --- these are a dark brown/green --- the ribbing of the first one is done and a few rows up after that -- looking good


finished another afghan square too --nice colors -- only 8 more to fill the box


busy, busy!

time to get to it

Progress being made, but nothing to see here

I'm still dealing with the issue of the new camera and the old desktop computer refusing to "play nice"

yesterday my sister suggested that I try using the microsoft photo manager and see if that would solve the issue

but no

the whole issue is that the desktop computer simply does not "see" the camera

no problem with the laptop, it recognizes it right away and even asks me which software I want to use to deal with the pictures

so, I have no pictures to show you this morning

I made very good use of a Christmas present yesterday -- while I was chatting with my sister (for over an hour!), I was cutting out aprons and robes and preparing quilt blocks -- got to love having a headset for the cell phone!!

bead embroidery on the necklace is coming right along

stitching of the dragon has commenced

and I started knitting a pair of mittens for charity out of the left over wool from the gold sweater

yup, things are happening

I'll work on the picture thing

meantime, this morning when I opened my email file, I found that I had actually sold something from my Etsy site --- (once or twice a year rather I work at it or not I guess!) --- so I have an envelope to mail off today

the "undecorating" begins today -- and hopefully some more progress on projects

Christmas goodies revealed

there were goodies being made that I just couldn't talk about here before Christmas or there would have been no reason to wrap my daughter's presents -- she reads my blog!

here then is the case I made her to keep her colored pencils from being loose in the bottom of the plastic tub --- this is a pencil "book" --- pages within the case to hold each of the 50 colored pencils in its own secure slot


and this

throughout the year I mentioned the "Unidentified Christmas Project"

this is the project

a memory quilt, title "The Angel of Music" that includes blocks about her life

because she didn't get to read about the quilt as I went along, she also got a little book that talks about each block, why we used that image and what it meant to us

she liked it!


and there was a hat that is similar to the one I made for her husband and a pair of pink mittens (especially designed to be big enough to fit OVER her gloves for extra warmth when shoveling snow)

and of course there was the knitting of afghan squares in the car both ways, so there are 3 more for the box


I got a new camera for Christmas -- it's wonderful, 12 megapixels! And I have some great pictures already -- I just can't show them to you this morning!

Seems that even though I was able to download pictures successfully on to my laptop while I was away, no amount of installing, rebooting, pleading or swearing at the desktop computer will convince it that it should "talk nice" to the new camera.

At the risk of having the desktop computer totally stop working by saying this, this camera issue and the fact that my brother-in-law gave me a 60gig external hard drive for Christmas, is one more thing in the list of reasons why I'm considering doing away with the desktop.

In the meantime, I have to download pictures from the new camera to the laptop then write them to a click disc and carry the click disc to the desktop --- total P-I-T-A!

grrrrrrr!

wherein we discuss artistic frustration

I've been working on a project for Christmas -- sort of -- that entails the use of small (about 11 x 17 inches) pieces of fabric in prints for various holidays in the year

a lot of this project is done, and I was thinking, "no problem, I can knock out the rest of this in a jiffy"

being as today is halloween and thanksgiving is right around the corner and birthdays go on all the time I figured I'd be able to find some fat quarters with appropriate print on them and finish this right up

au contraire mon ami -- it seems that no one has these, at least not in a scale that works (shall we say that pumpkins and corn that take half a yard to do a repeat are a bit on the over-large size!)

why is it no one else has telepathically understood that I would need these and had them at the ready?

this may mean that I will be dragging out all of the Copic markers and doing a bit of fabric creation of my very own

just saying....

Some finished objects and another "no thanks"

I finished the beading yesterday afternoon -- whoo hooo!!

Now it's on to the backing (a double row of beads all the way around the edges.

Oh yes, and I have to remember to insert the magnetic clasp at the ends while I'm doing that.

As I was saying yesterday, this block for the afghan is now complete --- it took me about 45 minutes to weave in all the ends of the joins on this --- I'm glad I have used up almost all of that light blue now --- that's the one that is all little pieces about a yard long each (or even less)

I know, you're thinking "why didn't you just throw those away as pieces of string too short to use?"

Blame it on my grandma -- she taught me to knit with the string my grandfather brought home from the post office and it often was pieces of less than a yard long and we tied them together. Back when I was doing that though, we didn't bother with weaving in all the ends on a dish rag!

The next block has been cast on and two rows knit, so we are moving right along on this.

Yet another new doggie toy

My daughter tells me they have nicknamed these "the squid"

Up until this one I had made them out of a fur like fabric. This one is one leg of a pair of worn out blue jeans.

The kids and the dogs are coming to visit this weekend, so I thought it would be good to have a toy for the "Terrier-izor".

Yesterday we got another of those envelopes from a show we had applied to --- the "thanks but no thanks" kind --- only this group snuck up on me. It was still my envelope, and they didn't send my CD of .jpgs back, so as I was carrying it from the mailbox I was actually getting excited that we had got in. When I opened it and pulled the packet of paper out of the envelope, however, my check for the booth fees fluttered out of the stack and hit the floor along with my hopes of having successfully juried into the show.

Once again a letter that says "of the catagories of artists applying, the largest single category every year is jewelry, which means the competition for places in this category is especially hard." Is that supposed to make me feel better? (clue: it doesn't) Or is it someone's hint that I should submit my work in a different catagory?

Either way, we won't be going to Columbia, MO, for a show this year --- pfooey

So now I'm working on an application for a show in St. Joseph, MO. We have done this show -- in fact, we won a ribbon there in the crafts area, but last year when they put me in the crafts area again I told them "no thanks" --- I want to be in the arts area where a ribbon also means a cash prize, and better sales. I'm thinking about entering our work as "mixed media" instead of jewelry --- maybe that's a better description.

And so today not much will get done as there is shopping to be done and supposedly a big spring snow on the way for tomorrow.

into the fray!

not all that great, thanks

he whispered to me that his name is Charlie

I'm glad he told me, because when I was working on him I was calling him "lumpy", which he obviously didn't like

ah well






Yesterday we made the 45 minute drive to the place that hopefully can repair my sewing machine

My Viking Designer I has been out of commission (unless you need to just sew a straight seam -- or prop a door open) for a while now -- the "touch screen" that controls all of the stitches and functions was not responding -- no amount of sweet talk, resetting or swearing were of use, and I had decided that I was just going to have to live without it until I could save up what it would cost to have it repaired (and figured that would happen next summer -- maybe)

My darling brother-in-law, however, would like me to embroider some shirts for him (a job that will take about 2 or 3 hours once the machine is working), and doesn't trust anyone else for the job, so he volunteered to pay for the repair

I'm once again humbled by his generosity (and my sister's too)

So now begins the impatient waiting for the shop to call and tell me about the machine (why is it that I had been resigned to being without the machine for another 6 or 8 months before it went to the shop, and now I want it back RIGHT NOW?!)

When we got back from our trip to the shop I was just not feeling that great, so aside from one more purple bead medallion and what knitting I did in the car, I just didn't get anything done yesterday (there was even some laundry that didn't get folded until this morning, and it hasn't been put away yet)

this morning I'm still feeling under the weather -- sort of like I was in the way of a large truck that went speeding by

I will be moving slowly today

what happened to summer?

I know, there's just no pleasing me

for several weeks you heard me whine and complain about how hot it was

well, yesterday we set a record for the LOWEST high temperature ever

seriously!

it was rainy and cool and gray

but what better weather can you possibly ask for to put up peaches?

this is yesterday's work

all lovely, pretty colors, lovingly preserved for winter eating

and sticky!!

today's chore will be getting the outsides all washed off, labeling the jars and packing them into a box to go off to my dad -- all of these are for him --

we still have some to put up for us, but I'll be doing those in a different syrup


this is what my sewing machine SHOULD be doing

imagine my frustration when I got all ready to do some embroidery only to discover that the touch screen (the rectangular box on the right side) which controls EVERYTHING is dead

so basically right now I have a very pricey sewing machine that is stuck on the stitch configuration that I used the last time the touch screen worked -- which is a basic straight stitch, about 11 to the inch, suitable for doing simple seams on cotton fabric

meantime I'm told it will cost in the neighborhood of $250 to have it repaired -- the issue being that I can't take it to just anybody because Viking will not sell the touch screen part to someone who is not an authorized Viking dealer -- no garage mechanics allowed here -- so it also means I will have to deal with a store that I am less than fond of

to say I am not a happy camper is an understatement -- all things considered, I wonder if I should have put the $$ I spent on this machine somewhere else

(Ever notice how sewing machines have come to resemble automobiles? The more bells and whistles we get the more it requires a "certified" mechanic at higher and higher prices. I have a Brothers sewing machine which was my high school graduation present. I've made hundreds of things on it and it's never had to go to the shop because it was simple enough for me to clean it and oil it and replace it's belts. The days of being able to do that are long gone.)

ok, I'll get off my soap box now and go see if the rain has let up enough that we can go to the farmer's market!