finishing more projects

last winter's sweater for Mr Cute has worn really well

except for the buttons

so yesterday I removed the old ones and put on new ones

all set for another winter!





finished the bracelet last night

I still need to do the paperwork to enter it in the competition I made it for

I'm pretty happy with the way it came out




 the snowmen are done

I decided that all those hats need pom poms on their tops

I'm pretty sure these little cuties are going to my daughter

but I'm thinking I may want to take a few more pictures and maybe use it to make this year's Christmas cards





we've already mowed the lawns this morning --- trying to get that sort of work done before it gets too hot is always a good thing

time to go get the grocery shopping done!

pickin' and knittin' and beadin'

apparently, the weather conditions are good for a bumper crop of peppers!

aside from the two little Roma tomatoes and the one little squash, the whole basket is full of peppers

I have discovered that we have an eggplant that has actually set and there are several pumpkins that are developing too


 the first of the scarves for the snowmen is now complete -- this whole thing took less than an hour from beginning to end

cool

now that this hat and scarf are done, it's time to put some other color of yarn in the bag for this project





 more bead work

the night sky is slowly covering the surface of this





yesterday afternoon I got the darker gray painted in the bedroom -- there  is so much  white trim in there that it took me almost as long to do all the taping as it did to put on the paint!  and once again this morning I'm doing a happy dance that I will not have to put on another coat of paint --- the next step is to paint all of that white trim -- and the INSIDE of the closet, which doesn't look like it's ever had anything but the builders primer coat of paint -- ick

time for breakfast --- lots of work to do!

outside, inside (and upside down?)

along with the painting projects inside the house there is some work going on in the yard

there on the far right you can see the edge of the giant blue spruce that takes up much of the side of the front yard

which also means no grass will grow under it

in the last couple of weeks the DH has installed all of that lovely red scallop topped concrete edging

yesterday we measured and cut and put down three strips of the weed block cloth and moved the octagon stepping stones out onto that area

we still need a bag of gravel to be able to level those stones before we can put down the rest of the weed block, then we'll be adding some more white rock and a lot of redwood mulch

this will look so much nicer than that bare dirt with the assorted weeds

after the outdoor work was finished, I just didn't feel like I had the energy to go upstairs and paint walls

I settled on painting the rest of the details on the wood snowmen

these make me smile

and there on the right side of the picture you can see the first of the finished hats -- that one is for the snowman that has the yellow ear muffs

the wood is ready for the coats of sealer now

and there are five scarves and four more hats to be knit


and I'm loving this

 the blue work is just flowing along

I'm starting to think about going and hunting up some dark blue leather for the back -- I'll need that before long

I'm also thinking about how to create the clasp on it -- I'm thinking about a toggle, but I want to do a little different style than I've done before

one of the quilt groups that I belong to is working on a "group" quilt -- we were inspired by a group project done by a group of Missouri quilters that focused on a river, which you can read more about   here --- we're sworn to secrecy until the big reveal later this year, but I'm happy to say that I finally have a design that I'm happy with and I'll be working on fabric selection some this week --- Yippee!!

time to get busy!

thinking cool thoughts

it's August

it's hot

so of course I'm working on -- SNOWMEN?

since I unearthed these while I was going through some other stuff and getting rid of things, I decided I should actually finish them

the little picture on the right is a close up of one of them -- each of them has a little orange "carrot" nose and the "ear muffs" have been painted on each one in different colors

last night I started knitting the first of the little hats to go on these

the beading continues on the moon piece

now that the beading from the left side has moved far enough to touch the center moon I'll be moving to the far right hand side and repeating the process until the beads reach the full moon from that side

this piece has largely been a "happening", as I had no real clear picture in my head of what it would look like when finished

and so far I really like the whole look

yesterday I spent some time working in the bedroom I'm painting --- in a room with this much "trim" (around doors, windows, baseboards and chair rails), it takes almost more time to tape everything than it does to paint!  I hope to get the second color on soon

time to get moving

current project -- and a really old one

cruising along! yesterday afternoon I got one side of this piece totally beaded and did a little bit of work on the other side too

before long I'll have to go looking for some dark purple leather to back this with

the autumn quilt has now been trimmed and the binding started

and all of the strips to put the Y'upik quilt together have been cut too


I've been going through things

and I found these

these pieces of wood were the tops of fence boards that the DH trimmed off when he built a gate

we bought these particular boards because they were the least expensive and he planned to cut these off, but I couldn't just let them go into the trash, so I had him attach a block of wood on the back of each one so they are self standing

now that they have been resurrected, I needed to do the drawing so I can get the faces painted on them

I did this one last night

the plan is to paint the face (including the earmuffs) on the wood and to knit hats and scarves from whatever yarn is available (I'm sure THAT will be no problem)

I like it!

yeah, I know, do I really need another project?  well, I think this one should get finished!!

along with all of that, yesterday I started painting the white trim in the bedroom I'm repainting -- I know the white will take 2 coats, so the first coat went on yesterday --- I'm already looking forward to having this job finished

Happy Valentine's Day

I made cards for a select few folks this year -- and for the first time ever I actually got them sent off to Loveland, Colorado where they put a special stamp on the outside of the envelope along with a special hand cancelling of the stamp (a tradition they've been doing since 1947 -- see more here)

this was one of them

my daughter also did handmade cards that she sent out from Mr Cute

actually this tradition of making valentines by hand began back when my daughter was about 10, and our friend in San Jose, CA, started it when we spent a Saturday afternoon doing this as a mother/daughter activity and we've continued doing this, both together and apart, ever since

yesterday, while I was searching for something else, I found this piece of mixed media art that I did a while ago

I'll be adding him to the Etsy store soon


yesterday I got the envelope telling me it's time to renew my domain name -- which reminds me that I need to do something about revising the website (in my own defense, I was thinking about doing that this time last year then we had some major computer issues and I just never got back to doing it)

guess it's time to think about it again

new things, old things

yesterday afternoon I got back to this

it took me a bit of fiddling with the seed beads to figure out how to arrange them around those bugle beads

nice progress

a while back (ok, over a year ago!) I spent some time playing with needle felting

at that time I did several birds and combined them with wood bird houses that had been painted or antiqued and felted flowers added too

when we stopped doing craft shows, most of this stuff just got packed up into plastic tubs and put away

recently I have started going through things and I found this piece

so, I put him in my Etsy shop -- not the one where I put all my bead work, but the OTHER one

and since I've decided to start putting my fiber work and mixed media pieces out there in that shop, you'll see a new link over there on the right side of the blog, so if you want to go check out what's out there you can use the link

on Wednesday the DH had his surgery -- originally scheduled for 1 pm, because of issues with the scheduling ahead of him, he finally got into surgery at about 2:30 pm

it made for a very long day by the time he had 2 hours of surgery, then 2 hours in the recovery room before they put him in a room for the night

lots of time for me to work on portable projects

like making this entire hot pad for my daughter (she told me when we were at her house at Christmas that some of the ones I had made her a few years ago had begun to wear out), and start on another one

when you sit in the waiting area of the surgical center of a hospital and you are paying attention you see both ends of the spectrum of what happens there

during those 4 hours there were 6 babies born (the hospital plays Brahm's Lullaby on the intercom for each one) and a family was told that their loved one didn't make it through whatever the surgery was (I'm thinking that has to be the part of the job that doctors must most hate)

the DH came home yesterday afternoon -- the Bionic Man -- he has a new shoulder joint made of metal and plastic -- now begins the long slog toward healing and rehab --

keep those prayers coming please!

baby things and other excitement

even though I didn't think I'd done much the past few days, things seem to be getting finished

there on the left if the first (probably of many) little sleeper for my coming grandson (still can't quite get my head around that one!!)

and my daughter had purchased a valance for the nursery, but it was way too wide for the window in the room, so she asked me to make a little modification -- I removed the panel with the squirrel and finished off the end -- I'm going to make a pillow out of it as soon as I get to the store to pick up the necessary materials

and I've started working on this piece again

all of the tree trunks are now attached, and here in this picture I've pinned down the first of the branches on the aspen trees

I cut strips of the bark fabric on the bias so I can bend and curve the branches as I go

since this is such a big piece it's pretty hot to work on it for very long at a time right now

but cool weather is coming!

a while back I did a 3 panel wall hanging that had maple, aspen and cottonwood leaves on it

for a while I've been thinking about doing a piece with oak leaves

yesterday I finally got around to cutting the rubber stamp that I need to stamp on the background fabric before I start doing the applique

pretty nice I think

I'm also working on a more Christmas themed piece that has holly

so while I had all of the tools out I figured I might as well cut that stamp too!

so maybe today I'll drag out the paints and have a stamping good time (might as well make all of the mess at once!!)


worked on the pattern pieces for the Dream Rocket piece yesterday too -- finally settled on what I'm going to do to create the "blue planet" part of it, so some progress is being made

a couple of days ago I started another little baby undershirt, and I'm already over half way up to where it breaks for the arm holes

picked up this lovely cotton yarn in the sale bin -- marked half off because the original wrapper was missing

that certainly didn't matter to me, I was happy to get this nice yarn to work with

yesterday morning the DH had to have a tooth pulled -- poor baby

while I was sitting in the waiting area I got this much done on another shawl

I'm using that same pattern I used for the red one

I had tried to use this yarn for a scarf a while back and just didn't like the look of it

this is much better -- the pattern makes a nice "waffle" and the yarn has a bit of "fuzz" to it, so it fills the waffle and makes it look warm and cozy

oh yeah, and I finally wrote the pattern down -- just in case someone asks

lots to do today -- got to get moving!

Unfinished or In Transition?

when I attended my quilt guild meeting earlier in the month, there was a discussion about unfinished objects --

specifically, at our birthday party next month, we have been asked to bring an unfinished object to play "pirate" with as part of the festivities

I asked what we were to do if we didn't have any unfinished objects and created quite a stir

perhaps its a semantic issue

when I said that I didn't mean I didn't have any projects that are not complete -- just that I have several projects in process all at once, some of which are being worked on more urgently than others

take these two items for instance

these are a design idea that has been bounced around a lot

the very first idea was to do these as part of a landscape that was small enough to wear as a necklace

it then morphed into individual panels that are a combination of fabrics and beads that I was thinking about putting into wood frames

but now I'm wondering if they could be part of a quilted landscape (there are sketches for at least 2 more buildings, possibly more)

I don't know

but I do know I'm not ready to let go of this design yet, so it's not an unfinished object (as in, "I've given up on this one") but more an "Object in Process" -- OIP? or perhaps an "Object in Transition" -- OIT?

I know, it doesn't have the pizazz of "UFO", but it is a lot more descriptive of what's really happening

The Mother's Day 6 a.m. get up

the furry four legged child in this household has no concept of the idea of "sleep in" -- nope, this morning I got my usual 6 a.m. wake up call -- a wet nose on whatever bare skin she can find -- got to love dogs!

but before I launch into what I got done yesterday, I just want to say Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there!
feeling pretty good about yesterday's work in the "studio"

one half of the red beads and pewter necklace is strung up

the way this came together is pretty amazing -- I hope to get a lot of the other half done today then I can think about exact placement of the center stone


I have only four more petals to put on to the last sunflower -- which means I need to get busy with figuring out what the next flowers will be on this piece

and the Christmas sweater is 23.415% complete

oh yes, and I finished addressing the 97 postcards for the charity auction!

while I was in the store this skein of yarn just hopped into the basket -- you may recall back at the end of March I gave a baby afghan to the dental assistant that helped me out, so my baby gift stash is need of replenishing

I think this stuff will knit up into a very nice afghan -- and it should be a quick one to do since it is a bulky yarn which means the really big needles will come out


picked these up too -- one can never have too many wash cloths in the house

and there are still patterns on embroidery stitches of my sewing machine that I haven't tried, so I'll be giving some of them a whirl on these

(just because these were inexpensive doesn't mean they need to look "cheap" when I get done!)

then there are these

an office supply store is a dangerous place -- I have always liked markers and recently I've learned that many of them -- these especially -- can be used on fabrics to do art work and they even wash pretty well without fading out too much

the plan, however, is the use these as more accents on the Out of Africa pieces


for doing more detail on this sort of animal --

these would be oryx

a sort of ox like animal with very cool markings and amazing horns

since I'm using rubber stamps to create the basic animal shape on the fabric, the highlighting has to be done with something else --

all those new colors of sharpies should make this fun
maybe well try this one too -- very colorful

and I haven't done any birds for this yet

this would be a Hornbill


-- got to get a couple of other things finished so I can get back to these!!

Pictures as promised

the first portion of the sashiko work is complete

the dragon took an amazingly short period of time to stitch, and the whole look is pretty neat

yesterday I started on the sleeves -- the will be covered in an all over interlocked geometric pattern and because it is something that I could easily create a cardboard template for, I am not using the interfacing on them -- they will still be lined, but the extra layer just doesn't seem necessary

I had originally thought about using a bamboo motif along side the dragon on the back, but I have decided that would take away from the awesomeness of the dragon itself, so I will use those on the front

so I still will need to figure out what I will use to "frame" the dragon and what the lower part of the back will be, but it's moving right along!

beading is progressing

I've finished the "craters" on the moon and I'm now doing the fill stitches to cover the rest of that surface

then it will be on to the sky -- a whole assortment of blacks in matte, AB, transparent and opaque beads with a few that will look like stars in the sky




I'm testing some painting techniques for the Trees project

on the right hand side is the first test --- I mixed airbrush ink with ordinary laundry starch (the liquid kind) and applied it with a piece of wadded up newspaper

the left hand side was test number two --- I mixed a different color airbrush ink with textile medium and applied it with both a toothpick (the little pine branch looking area) and with some crumpled small size bubble wrap

the idea was to find out which "carrier" was better to work with in terms of having the ink "stay put" as well as finding out if either one would fade out when washed or change the whole "feel" (hand) of the fabric in such a way that made it hard to work with (paint does that which is why I wanted to use something else)

so, here are my conclusions:

neither the starch or the textile medium changes the feel of the finished, washed fabric, but the starch does feel stiffer before it is washed.

neither the starch or the textile medium faded or "bled" when washed

I like the look of the bubble wrap stamping better than the newspaper, and the textile medium did a better job of adding body to the paint in the working stages so it would stay where I put it

looks like I'll be using bubble wrap and textile medium and getting started on painting the background of the Trees project sometime in the next week

I have finished knitting one wool mitten body and I'm ready to start on the thumb -- no pictures on this project until I get a finished pair!

this is the newest afghan square all finished though


we're working on taking down Christmas a little each day (much like we put it up!) I'm getting antsy to have it done so I can get back to projects --- yesterday I came up with an idea for a couple of birds for the Out of Africa series, which means more cutting of stamps, printing of stamps, etc., etc.

wishing for the packing chant! (hockety, pockety, wockety, wack, odds and ends and brick a brack, shrink in size, very small, we've got to make enough room for all)

First Finished Object (and the start of a new project)

about a year ago when we did the big inventory of jewelry I pulled this piece and put it with the items that I wanted to rework

while I really like the sun face and the colors, there was something about it that just didn't look "finished" to me

and the fact that it had remained in the unsold inventory told me that might be true for folks looking at it as well

on New Year's Eve I was looking around for a project to work on -- the down side of the week between Christmas and New Year's is that most of my projects are done (for Christmas) and I'm in that "now what do I do" mode


I found this in the bin of "things to rework"

I had decided quite a while ago that what it needed was some fringe

not the branched fringe that I use on some of my pieces, but something that looked like a waterfall of color running right off the piece that would extend the color but be fluid and in motion

I had even ordered the drop beads to be the ends of each strand back when I put in a supply order

so here it is, fringe complete (it took a couple of days to finish -- fringing is time consuming!), and I have to say that I really like the look -- now it looks finished!




and this is the beginning of a new piece that I'm going to start stitching on today

this piece of glass is what will be "suspended" in the round open space on the left side of the piece

the irregular shaped areas at the top of the drawing will actually be open in the finished piece

the working title of this is "Earth Rise"

seems like there is some sort of "space" theme going here (I guess I could say this is the third in the series since I had also done one called "moon shine" -- and no, it did not include mason jars full of corn liquor!)

I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to actually do this piece yet, thinking I wouldn't have the beads I needed, but after doing a "materials crawl" through all my bins I find that I actually do have all of the materials I need (or that I know right now I need), so the drawing has been transfered to the pelon and I'm ready to start doing the netting around the glass -- cool!

I finished making a bathrobe for the DH yesterday. Just before we went away for the holiday I had bought the fabric, but didn't get the sewing done before we left. It's all finished now.

onward!!

a few more completed experiments/projects

my daughter asked me to add an embroidered name to the sock for the newest dog in the house

I finished this up yesterday afternoon

dark green rayon embroidery thread on the red and white dotted fabric

lookin' good


my daughter got a set of scrap booking scissors for Christmas (the kind that cut all kinds of fancy edges)

like with the colored pencils, she wanted some way to keep them organized and under control

while we were still at her house we went to the fabric store and she picked the fabric and I made the roll for her

(hey, I'm getting really good at this!)



bead work complete on another building!

the satin fabric for the metal siding worked pretty well

so now I could start on the next building -- if only I could remember what I did with the folder with all the drawings and notes that I put in a "safe place" when we cleaned up to decorate

this seems to happen to me every year about this time and it is really frustrating

I really need to have some organized place to keep things that doesn't need to be "cleaned and decorated" because other people might visit

anyway, as soon as I find the folder, I'll start on the next piece


I had started on this little "experiment" back around Thanksgiving, and finished it up when we were visiting at Christmas

the idea here was to test my idea about making the trees on the wall hanging actually stand out in a three dimensional look as well as seeing if I could get the "look" of both aspen bark and redwood bark

I'm pretty pleased with both

in the little picture you can actually see how the trees stand up from the background

so the next step is to experiment with the idea I have to create the look of leaves in the background of the piece -- I have airbrush ink in several colors and I'm going to try mixing it with some starch to give it some "body" so it will stay where I put it until it dries -- hopefully

we'll see how that goes

one more afghan square complete

I started a sort of sea foam green baby afghan just before Christmas -- it is one of those that is knit on the diagonal (started with 5 stitches, increased one stitch every row until there were 160 stitches on the needles) -- so yesterday afternoon I "turned the corner" and have started decreasing every row -- this part seems to be going a lot faster!


while we were away I did some design work for a new beaded piece -- looks like I'll finally be using that gift certificate I got for being a finalist in the Fire Mountain competition -- I'll need to order some beads to use for the design


So it's been an eventful year here at Esmerldas Studio -- we look forward to an even more productive year in 2010.

Happy New Year to you all -- party safely!!