finished things and starting new ones

quilting on this project is done

today I will be squaring up the edges and cutting the facing to do the edge finishing

then there will be the sleeve and the label

considering that the beginnings of this piece sat in a box for almost a year, finishing it was pretty easy once I figured out the problems

this is a piece that was donated to the charity auction I'm chairing that takes place in October

the piece is a cute little Halloween wall hanging, but the person that donated it didn't put on any way to hang it

yesterday I went through my stash, found some fabric that went with the back and put a sleeve on it

before the auction we'll get a rod and a wire added to it so we can actually hang it

one auction item done -- many, many to go


more beads added to the pumpkin pin

this has been fun, and I'm thinking about some tubular beading to be little curly tendrils on this after I get the pumpkin itself finished

meantime I'm thinking about the next animal print bracelet

I think it will be tiger -- the orange beads are already out!






Halloween isn't far away

when we visited with my daughter she asked if I would turn this sweat suit that she bought for Mr Cute into a Halloween costume

oh my -- it's de ja vue

I think every costume my daughter wore until she went away to college was the result of something that ran through my sewing machine

moving on to the next generation!

so watch this space -- I'll be transforming this into something interesting



the weather has cooled some (although yesterday it was near 80), so the ripening of the tomatoes has slowed down, but we still had a lot of them to put up yesterday

8 pints of tomatoes -- skinned and a little salt and lemon juice added -- then into the jars followed by more sounds of "pinging" lids

there are a lot more tomatoes out there, so we're not done with this process yet


today's plan includes mowing the lawn and folding the last of the laundry from yesterday before I get back into the studio to get some work done

time to get to that

pumpkin time

nothing quite captures the whole fall thing for me like pumpkins

over the weekend I did a Treasury on Etsy titled "Pumpkin' Chunkin'" -- its a catchy title even if I abhor the practice because I have a real issue with wasting food when there is anyone going hungry

I also started this new piece of bead work -- it will be a pumpkin pin when I get it finished

a lot of the beads in this came out of those 34 boxes of beads that my mother gave me a while back -- there were about 8 different colors and styles of orange beads in there

this one should come together pretty quickly

the last branch of the redwood trees got stitched down last night -- so now it's on to the "leaves" -- I'm hoping to get the sewing machine pulled out and spend some time with the free motion trying some of the ideas I have for that -- and of course there's always the hand embroidery if that doesn't work

you may remember this piece

I finally finished the quilting of the center of this and I was still trying to figure out how to do the "frame" part without leaving all the raw edges that I so dislike

I ended up taking each piece of the framing, turning it with its right side against the right side of the center, stitching through all the layers then turning it back out to the edge

so now I'm working on quilting the frame pieces

moving right along!

this will definitely be finished in time for the November and December exhibits


over the weekend I went and got the buttons for the Christmas hoodie sweater I've been working on, and last night I did the two rows that create the button holes in the front bands -- only two more rows to work, then the bind off and finishing -- WHOOT!

time to get to that huge pile of laundry

in a pickle

and we did it with great relish!

heh

I ended up using only 2 of the 3 baseball bat zucchinis to make up this batch of sweet pickle relish

and the onions and bell pepper in there also came out of our garden

these 6 half pint jars will hold us for a while (the last batch I made lasted 3 years!)

there's something that says "fall's coming" about the smell of spices and vinegar boiling on the stove -- and that lovely "PING" of successful sealing of jars

the last of the pictures from last weekend's visit to my daughter's

great picture of my daughter and her son

I think he looks like her

sweet!

A good thing -- a sale!

the past few weeks I admit I've been feeling a bit miffed by not making the cut on a couple of pieces that I had entered in competitions

let me tell you there's nothing quite like selling a piece of my work to help alleviate that feeling

this morning I got the notice that this piece had sold out of my Etsy store

this one was done as an experiment, so I'm real happy that someone (in FRANCE no less!) thinks it's good enough for them to pay for

YIPPEE!!

time to get it to the post office

about those baseball bats

you may recall that yesterday I was talking about needing to get out into the garden to pick things after our five day absence from home

I was expecting there would be a big zucchini lurking out there

three of them was a bit of a surprise!

later today I'll be dragging out the big McCoy crock and the grater to get that pickle relish started


the giraffe patterned beaded bracelet is finished!

this came out really well -- bracelet number two in the Wild Animal series (the first one was zebra)

so now I'll be doing either leopard or tiger -- at least that's what I'm thinking right now

and this piece will be going out into my Etsy store



last night was my monthly quilt guild meeting

I had some fabric that I took for the put and take table -- the result of my on going cleaning and organizing

and I picked up these two pieces to bring home

these two coordinated shades of teal have a tiny pink print on them and I think will combine well with some pink fabric that I found in the stash as I've been cleaning

these (and all the stuff I picked up over the weekend) will be going into the washer to get ready to use them

and because I sat and listened to a presentation last night I finished another afghan square

it always surprises me when ladies of the guild come and ask me what I'm knitting and how do I get a square when I start with just 3 little stitches in the corner

I'm thinking I should make up a little business card sized thing that explains Close Knit Hugs and how this afghan square works that I can just hand out

this block was sort of self striping as I was using up pieces of yarn and it just worked out this way

nice

and further cuteness from the weekend

Mr Cute discovered that grandpa had left his cane standing against the piano

he had a grand time playing with it

sooooo adorable!!

(give me that old soft shoe!)

Voting Begins Today

If you've being following along you'll remember this piece of bead work that I've been fiddling with during August

It has been entered in a contest that you can vote on, and the bidding begins today

just hop on over to the Etsy BeadWeavers blog to take a look at all of the items that were entered and vote on your favorite

charity quilts and Mr Cute

I was beginning to wonder if I was going to miss getting the monthly charity quilt tops finished

and actually I was only going to do one -- go figure

these two mostly came out of my fabric stash, and they are not quite identical -- but the difference is so subtle that I'm betting no one but me will notice what it is

quilt guild meeting is tonight, so this was working up to the last minute a bit more than I'm comfortable with -- we'll try to do better next month

remember this?

months ago I sent off photos to a competition

this morning I got the email that this wasn't good enough to even make the next stage of the competition

well fine

I'll be taking a new set of photos and putting it out in my Etsy store

along with the giraffe bracelet which I got sandwiched together yesterday and just need to do the final finishing work and the photo shot




here's another picture of Mr Cute from our weekend visit

he's using our big black dog as a place to pull up

she's so patient with him, just lets him climb all over her

such a good dog

such a cute kid!


so today, after two days of cool, cloudy weather (it was all of 60 degrees here yesterday after being in the 90s last week!), it's sunny and warmer -- I'll be heading out after breakfast to pick stuff in the garden -- I'm pretty sure there is a zucchini the size of a baseball bat lurking out there somewhere

that last long weekend of summer

red sky at morning

these (and about 2 dozen more) were taken from the back deck at my daughter's house yesterday morning

since there is not a lot behind her house but rolling fields, the view of the morning sky is amazing

now how do I get that "look" onto fabric!?

while were were there we had a cooking lesson

homemade applesauce

(and since I'm still recovering from having a tooth pulled, this was something I could actually eat!)

I'll be posting the recipe on the kitchen blog soon and I'll put a link here when I get that done





and we spent time with Mr Cute!

who spent part of the weekend not feeling very well -- having picked up a virus somewhere

and when Mr Cute doesn't sleep -- nobody else sleeps

which meant that when he napped on Monday afternoon, we all napped

by the time we left yesterday morning he was almost back to normal

thank goodness!





of course a trip means time in the car

which means afghan squares get knit

these are raw off the needles, still need to be blocked, but they are done other than that

lots of work to do now that I'm home again -- time to get to it!

a garage workshop project

the DH has been busy in his workshop too

our little grandson, aka Mr Cute, is cruising around and grandpa thinks he needs a wagon

this wagon is about 40 years old, and has been through a couple of kids already

and when he pulled it out of the storage shed, it looked terrible -- rusty and the supports for the wheels were bent

it looks like a brand new wagon now!

we're hoping Mr Cute will enjoy it

finished the bead work on this item last night

YIPPEE

time to pull out the box of leather and get it put together as a bracelet



I'm thinking about a new art quilt

the leaves are falling off the trees here already -- at least off the very stressed cottonwood trees

even the DH has been carefully picking them up and bringing them to me

yup, I definitely not done with this whole leaf theme

time to get moving -- need to go pick in the garden before it gets hot

when life gives you tomatoes

make sauce!

that tray of tomatoes (plus about half again that many) made all this

and we decided to do just plain sauce -- added a bit of salt and some lemon juice and put it up that way so we can use it for all kinds of things -- Italian cooking, Greek cooking -- even a batch of homemade tomato soup if that's what sounds good at the time

simple, easy, and beautiful -- not to mention the lovely sound of the jars going "ping!" as the sealed one by one

since I'm feeling so much better -- off the pain meds now that the bad tooth is out -- I got a lot more work done on the bracelet

almost finished!


and the work on the landscape quilt is moving right along too -- just one more small mountain to quilt before I move on to doing the sky -- and I'm pleased with the way it looks too

under the category of "don't pick up 400 stitches around a sweater while on pain meds" -- last night I got to rip the original pick up out and do it over -- wow were those weird looking -- tonight I'll get to actually start in on the ribbed band

time to get moving -- need to mow that front yard

beading as fast as I can

heh, well, maybe not quite as fast as I can, but this new piece is really moving along

there is only about 1/4 of the surface left to bead and then I can put the bracelet together

I'm hoping that I'll actually feel like working on this after today's dentist appointment -- when the tooth comes out

this piece of beading, however is totally finished

the team that I belong to on Etsy does monthly challenges, and the September challenge was titled "Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH My!"

this morning I listed this piece which is my entry in the challenge

voting for this month's challenge will be from September 9 to September 15 on the Etsy Bead Weavers Team blog



and in case you're now thinking "what happened to the quilts?", I'm still hand quilting the landscape piece that I started working on a few weeks ago -- it is about 2/3 finished, so we are heading down the home stretch!

work continues on the big trees piece as well -- and I finished knitting the hood of the Christmas sweater last night

lots being done, just no pictures to prove it!

and then there is this

yesterday's picking (except for the 3 green ones that we're eating for breakfast this morning) of tomatoes

a lot of these are from the heritage variety of roma tomatoes that we planted this year

the DH is going to turn these (and some others that were picked a bit earlier in the week) into pasta sauce which we will put up in pint jars

we'll be enjoying these all winter long

time to go get the laundry done before the trip to the dentist!

old, new and back again

this has been one of those weeks that I felt like I was working hard, but for the most part there just wasn't anything to show for it -- partly because I spent several hours taking photos for a new sales venture for some of our more expensive jewelry and several more hours sorting, washing and ironing fabric in an attempt to organize the "stash" into a more usable form

toss in the monthly shopping trips and a visit to the dentist and you've got a recipe for a week that vanish with out a visible trace

yesterday was better

I got back to the bead work on this project and by the end of the session I have this now almost 2/3 of the way finished with the beading

and it looks really good


I've been fiddling with ideas for over a week trying to come up with an idea to put footprints on that yellow brick road

yesterday I cut two rubber stamps that I will experiment with on some other surfaces first to be sure I don't totally mess up what is already finished

I'm hoping to get to the next step later today to test this out


yesterday was day two of the two day machine quilting class -- and of the two was the more difficult

last week we were doing very simple shapes using the walking foot on the machine, and for the most part it was something that I got the hang of pretty quickly

yesterday's exercises were in free motion quilting -- and the best comparison I can give is the "pat your head and rub your tummy" thing --

when doing free motion the key seems to be "fast foot, slow hands", which for someone that has had the experience of breaking off a sewing machine needle in an index finger is a little intimidating

I think my best work was the little running horsie

and I'll be spending some time fiddling with this whole idea some more in the near future

in the mean time, while I don't feel confident to just jump into a whole quilt with free motion quilting, I do feel that I could do a small lap quilt with my walking foot without any problem, so I'll probably try that in the next couple of months

this photo is multi-purposed

first, I am absolutely amazed at the clarity and detail that I get with my new printer's scanning abilities -- wow, and wow again -- I'm just beginning to understand how great an addition to my art process it will be

second, this is a scan of an actual leaf that I picked up off the front lawn this morning -- a little reminder that although its still HOT here, fall really isn't far away (and the holiday season after that -- YIKES!)

and third, it's clear that I'm not done yet with this theme as inspiration for art work as I just can't seem to walk away from a leaf like this, but must bring it in the house, dry the surface and stick it in the scanner!

and clearly this might be a good them to pursue with the free motion quilting techniques

an ongoing source of inspiration for art work is a good thing

more beading

radio silence yesterday because I had a dentist appointment at 9 am -- before the time I usually get to this

and the dentist is not my favorite thing -- no change happening there -- but next Monday afternoon I'll be back in there to have the offending (and currently being treated with antibiotics) tooth pulled

oh joy -- NOT

finally got back to actually going something creative late yesterday afternoon

this is moving along -- slowly, but I am really pleased with how it looks

I'm hoping to get back to this today too, but we have errands to run first

onward

new bird resident and a trip amongst the produce

the last week or so I've been hearing a new song out in the garden

yesterday I finally saw the bird making the sound

he is amazing calm about me being out there, as he let me get close enough this morning to take this series of pictures

we have a spotted towhee (aka rufus towhee)
so cool!

the reason I was out there with the camera in the first place was to take pictures of the riot of color happening in the garden right now

the squash patch has suddenly burst into bloom and when you get close you can literally hear it buzzing

as I was snooping around I found this pumpkin in amongst the leaves -- when did that happen!?

I've also seen two hubbards and four butternuts out there, and after finding this pumpkin, I'm pretty sure there's another one out there -- maybe more than that

we planted a heritage variety of roma tomatoes this year and they are doing really well

unlike the newer type, these are all going to ripen much closer together instead of the onesie, twosies we get from the other plant

these are longer and more pointy on the bottom too

right now it's really pretty





while we were in the grocery store yesterday I discovered a bit of interesting art

or perhaps its one of those things for kids where they say "one of these things is not like the others"

but it took a moment or two for it to register on me

after it did, I took a picture with my cell phone and used my usual work around to get it to my computer so I could show it to you (take picture with cell phone, text photo to my daughter's smart phone and ask her to email it back to me -- which she does, from her smart phone, then I can download it to my desktop) -- if only for the photo abilities I love to have a smart phone, but can't justify what it would cost!

perhaps this picture is the reason we have such political issues right now -- we aren't trying to converse about apples and oranges, we're conversing about apples and lemons!

I do love this photo though and it may have potential as inspiration for a small art quilt

there were great plans for getting a lot of things done in the studio yesterday afternoon, but about half an hour after I could actually get to them our power went off -- and stayed off until 9 last night

we had what the DH calls a "hobo" dinner -- a piece of meat and a can of beans -- all cooked on the grill -- he just peeled the label off the can, opened it up and stuck it in the grill at the same time he was cooking the meat -- hey, it works!

hopefully today we'll do better

bead it

the bracelet that is

it's coming along nicely


meantime, I'm trying to clean out and reorganize my fabric stash -- in with this morning's laundry there are two complete loads of fabric that had been in the storage shed for a long time -- there is a lot of ironing in my future

time to get to it