returning to work

I'm trusting that eventually the last post I did here (on Thursday morning) will actually reappear out of whatever depths of cyberspace it went to when Blogger had it's "issue" -- fortunately one of the things I do every day just before I hit the "Publish Post" button is print out my post so I have a record!





One of the things that I needed to find out before I went very far on this piece that I wanted to do was find out how much it would cost me to get a mat cut for it

I made a visit to one of my local framing places and was pleased to find out that it wouldn't be too expensive to do, so I'm going to start working on the pieces for it
some of these pieces are actually well on their way

this pair of gazelles, for instance

they've already been stamped and I've done all of the Copic marker "embellishment"

so these guys are ready for me to do their background scene



the elephant has been stamped too

and I've just begun to do the embellishment on him (got as far as the end of his trunk before I got int erupted)

I would like to get everything to this stage before I move on to the next one












the giraffe and the zebras haven't been stamped yet -- these are just paper cutouts that I used as "place markers" so I could plan what I was going to do with the piece









and then there is the center block

the plan is to put the trunk of the tree in the center block and have the branches spread out over the mat across the whole top of the piece

somehow

it's pretty exciting!

these are the fabrics I was able to pick up this month at the guild meeting

the winter themed ones with a bit more added out of my personal stash should be enough to make one quilt top, and the floral is big enough to be part of more than one when put with some other fabrics -- neat

I've started working on the sky of the Hawaii piece, and it's moving right along

as is the quilting on the Hoffman piece -- I had a brief moment of "what am I doing here?", but after all the nice comments I got at the guild meeting (where I was again working on the curtain swirl quilting), I'm feeling better about it

today I hope to finish the monkey toy I've been knitting so I can move on to making his sweater, I have 6 rows left on the afghan, and the vest is moving along nicely too

meantime, I've been redesigning one necklace and looking for a source of materials for another one

things are definitely moving right along

and SAQA Visioning Conference begins on Thursday

whooooo hoooooo