Keep calm and knit on

the pile of dinosaur parts continues to grow -- spikes for the back, the "beak" and the eye balls are done now

the first of the Christmas cards --- I'm still considering the addition of some glitter -- either white on the trees or some red decoration on the top edge of the sled -- or both

I still have 49 of these to put together

time to get moving -- I have an appointment with the doctor to discuss an approach to the ongoing knee pain

getting back to normal

my finger has recovered enough that I was able to work on this bead work again yesterday

I have connected the three strands of pieces, now I need to figure out how much needs to be added at the ends of each one to create the back edge to the clasp

more parts of the dinosaur are finished --- all four legs have been knit now it's on to the feet, tail and the spikes

I've started another knitting project that I won't be able to show you until after Christmas since the person it's for reads my blog!

I'm making progress on my Christmas card project

my daughter used her Cricut machine to cut out the dogs and the sleds for me

I'm in the process of painting the sled runners with a silver gel and adding eye, nose and muzzle details on the dogs

they are coming along

and an actual finished project

and this one is for me!

this pattern was pretty easy to knit --- I like it!

I'm back to sewing on the big lap quilt too -- I'm about a third of the way through the quilting

time to get to it

Before and After

Back in September I took this piece to a meeting where it was critiqued by someone that has a lot more art education than I do

I made this piece during 2012 as a response to a challenge to make a piece of art based on the word FOUR

I was pretty sure it was finished -- it had even been in a showcase exhibit at a quilt show in Denver

but I wanted to hear what someone else thought

 

and this is what it looks like now

making the change was not real difficult, but I think it makes a big difference

I was pretty nervous about having something critiqued, but it was done in such a positive, constructive and supportive way that I came away really excited about the experience and now I've even joined an online critique group to continue asking for assistance with future pieces

(and yes, I did actually do a little hand stitching on this to finish it up last night, so the hand is recovering nicely, thanks)

the DH attended a wood working demo on Saturday afternoon, and while he was learning all about using his router, I sat and worked on knitting more parts for the dinosaur

that bright orange piece is the tummy gusset, then then gray head and the spotted back leg

this is moving right along

some more paper crafts got finished too --- this is the front of the invitations for a gathering that I did on Saturday morning

we've been doing the clean up of the leaves now that the cold weather and the wind have taken almost all of them off the trees

when I went to the shed in the back yard to get out the leaf blower, this is what I saw

evidence once again that there is ample material for making art all around if you are paying attention

I think this will be another piece in the "Slice of Life" series

today there is a bit more outdoor work to do and the usual Monday laundry -- time to get to that

what one can do with a bandaged finger

the hand is recovering -- it may be a few more days before I can hold a sewing needle to do bead work or hand stitching, but I discovered yesterday that there were a few things I can do

like stamping the trees onto the card stock for the Christmas cards

I did all 50 cards yesterday afternoon -- yippee!!  step one of that project is done

and I can knit!! 

so now the body of the dinosaur toy is all finished and I've finished the tummy section up to where the decreasing begins

this is a good thing since this at least is progress on Christmas projects!

and I worked on this some more

I have eight more rows to do that go from the front edge of the sweater over the shoulder and down to the back edge then I'll be doing the last sleeve 

rolling along here too

doing what I can.......

some good stuff, some bad stuff

I've been working on this year's Christmas cards

 from a drawing 

to a hand cut rubber stamp

 

to the way the stamp will look as the background of each card


I like how this is looking

and there is this drawing that I did recently

but the question, as with all abstract pieces is "which side up?"

I hope to make this into a quilted triptych, have not decided how big yet

I should have stayed with the paper crafting and stayed away from the sewing machine and I could have spent six hours at home instead of sitting the the waiting room of the emergency room waiting for what amounted to about 10 minutes of care

and before you ask why "why not your doctor's office" I'll tell you that I called there first but they didn't have anyone available to see me and I was told to go to the ER

I won't be doing any stitching for a few days, as the wound needs to heal from where they removed the sewing machine needle from my finger

talk about feeling majorly stupid

geesh!

valentines and dinosaurs

just a "sneak peek"

I've been working on Valentines

which of course involves glitter (soooooo much glitter)

got them all finished yesterday afternoon -- all ready to be addressed and mailed!

it's a blind dinosaur

yesterday I got the other two legs and the head stitched on, so now I have only the eyes and the frame

which means that by the end of the week I should be stitching the blocks together and moving this to the "ready to be quilted" stage

whoot!

so cute

and I've located some yarn in my stash to knit the dinosaur toy -- it's a variegated green --- PERFECT!


more work being done on the design for the Hoffman challenge

and here is where I've used one of the features on my new camera to do some of the work for me

I free form cut the three vases out of plain paper, and the roses were traced directly off of the challenge fabric

laid it all out on a big sheet of paper on the table and did some other drawing -- like adding the stems on the roses -- then took pictures of it with the new camera in "sketch" mode

I'll be printing out a sheet of this so I can do some additional sketching to work out background details

once I finish doing that I'll be able to print a full size pattern too

I do love being able to use my technology to help with my art!

another of the packages of goodies I had ordered arrived yesterday

I plan to make these little green cameos (they're about an inch tall) into a bracelet -- four separate links strung together with beads

I'll probably have to order a clasp for this, so I'll be perusing the Fire Mountain catalog



this morning we're heading off to Costco for our monthly run -- time to get moving!

the seasons are flying by

I finished the snow on the winter panel

the stark contrast of the white against the dark "bark" of the tree looks pretty neat

this panel is now ready to be quilted, and when the quilting is finished I'll be attaching a single enameled leaf charm

so I've moved on to the spring panel -- cutting the little leaves and attaching them by stitching a line down the center like the vein in a leaf

once all the leaves are attached I'll be going back and adding flowers

this is moving along nicely


meantime, in the studio yesterday I did some quilting on the lap quilt -- the quilting is almost finished -- yippee!! then I can do the binding -- and I might be able to get that done by Thursday's quilt guild meeting

I have always enjoyed coloring, so having an excuse to pull out the big tin of colored pencils and color the sheet of little mice was great

I decided to make each little mouse slightly different, so there is a white mouse, a gray mouse, a brunette mouse and a red headed mouse

once I finished coloring, I scanned this sheet and tweaked with the graphics software and printed out enough sheets to do my cards -- now it's on to the cutting of the ovals around these -- real progress toward the cards

the local quilt store called and told me that the Hoffman Challenge 2012 fabric has arrived -- this is very exciting because I've already been fiddling with some ideas for the project -- I hope to get there this morning to get a piece of the fabric so I can start figuring out the scale of what I have in mind

laundry is calling -- time to get to it

something to roar about

heh, just because you haven't seen anything from the Africa series for a while doesn't mean I'm not working on it

it's really hard for me to believe this is the same stamp that I used for the first lion which was declared a failure

this one is awesome

and the painting of the foliage around him went well too

right now I'm working on design ideas on how to incorporate all of the animal pieces into one cohesive presentation -- this part goes slowly, and is something that actually gets worked on quite a lot in those fugue moments between sleeping and waking

yesterday was pretty productive, even though I have no other pictures to show you --

the snow on the branches in the winter panel is almost completed -- I still have one other thing to do to that panel after that then it will be complete (and speaking of that fugue moment, this morning's was all about how to do the spring panel of this series!)

actual machine quilting took place yesterday as well -- and once again I was really happy that I got the quilter's gloves when I took the class back in August -- having them makes the moving around of the quilt so much easier

adorable isn't it?! I really like the designs that come from House Mouse.

I picked up this rubber stamp on a sale and I've been fiddling with Christmas card design ideas for a month or so

today I hope to have time to drag out the tin of colored pencils and add some color to this (and yes, there will be glitter!)

it's not too early to be doing this -- it takes time to make about 60 cards!

time to get moving

slowly progressing

I have managed to get half way across the bottom of this necklace adding the fringe

for some reason, this seems to be taking forever!

it looks really nice, however, so I think it will turn out to be worth the time I'm putting in to it


in the meantime, I've been adding other pieces to my Etsy store every day, so if you'd like to look at some of those, check out the right hand side of the blog page


yesterday I used those little water color flower pieces I had done to make up some Mother's Day cards -- playing with a different medium helps keep the brain moving

and this is the next completed piece of the monkey toy

this is his body

rolling along!

spring at last?

I had so much fun with the water color pencils on Sunday that yesterday afternoon I decided to do a few more drawings

they are primitives for sure, but it was kind of fun, and I may put them to use in making some greeting cards

I'm slogging along on all the other projects -- and did laundry and got groceries yesterday -- feeling sort of "stuck in a rut" just now

time to get to it

some play time

this was my first attempt at doing something with the water color pencils on actual water color paper

they look pretty good

like with every new medium, getting the feel of what the materials do is part of the learning curve

I did this one by drawing first then brushing carefully with water

I want to try brushing the paper with water first and drawing on the wet paper

we'll see how that goes

meantime, yesterday I spent lots of time in my chair with ice and heat, working on quilting and beading and knitting -- just not enough progress on anything to show you a picture yet

today we need to go get groceries! and of course there is the whole laundry issue

time to move

valentine project

yesterday I decided that even though there are a lot of projects that should be worked on I just needed to work on something fun that I could actually FINISH in one sitting

a couple of hours later I had created all the valentines I plan (right now) to do -- and it was FUN

(ok, it would have been more fun if my daughter had been here to play too, but I know she's working on her's at her house)


some more work got done on the Desert Dreams piece -- there are now three tubes complete -- and after I did some graphics searching yesterday, I'll be working on some sketches for how I want to do the center piece

I still haven't decided if I will be gluing the stone down and doing bead embroidery around it or if I'll put the stone in a net and create 3 dimensional off loom woven beading around it --

this morning my entire routine is in total disarray -- a major winter blast of cold air is on its way (the HIGH temperature tomorrow is forecast to be -3 degrees!) -- so when we got up at about 7, we took off to the grocery store to pick up what we need (milk, dog food, etc.) until about Thursday, then filled the gas tank in the van and headed home to "hole up" -- about half an hour after we got back, the snow began -- we're not supposed to get much snow, but oh, the cold!

I'm glad to be able to just hang out in the family room (where the extra space heater is) and work on projects

maybe I'll even get something finished!

Long overdue update

Wow - I can't believe it's actually been more than a week since I was out here to post

and it's been a very hectic week at that!


last weekend we were at my daughter's house with my friend from California

while we were there, we did some playing with pastels, a medium that I have not played with before

these two pieces were my attempts -- the pumpkins along the fence was my second try, and I'm much happier with it than with the first one

it was fun, but I think I'll be sticking to my fiber mediums

on Wednesday, the DH had the surgery to repair his shoulder

the surgery was much more extensive than had been anticipated, and took longer

with that extra time and between taking care of the "patient" I have finished up the quilting on the lighthouse water color piece that I started a couple of weeks ago

I've now trimmed it square and cut the binding, so I hope to have it finished in the next day or two

this was a really fun project, and I hope to do some more things with the water color pencils -- as soon as I get a chance to get some of my own


these are the mittnz 2011 knitting so far

three lovely pair -- two size XS and one size S


last night I started working on the first planned Christmas present for 2011 -- it's a crocheted afghan -- I know crocheting something this big will take me quite a while to complete because crocheting bothers my wrist, so I'm allowing a lot of time to do it

and it is that lovely time of year when I have to do taxes --- pffffftt! --- I have already finished up all of the required sales tax returns already though, so I've got a good start made --

onward!