Fiber and Pulp

Frightful?

Remember that Christmas song that begins 'O, the weather outside is frightful..."? I expect most of the local residents would think it quite applies to the past two days. ;)

Yesterday we got a very pretty inch or so of snow early in the day. Then last night, a bit of rain that froze into a thin sheet of ice. Today, more ice.

I drove up to my store this afternoon, thinking I could retrieve my purse, pay some bills, get my hair cut, etc. Forgot that my keys to the front door were on the other side of the door from me, in my purse. (sigh) Some days, just plain dumber than dirt. :P

Was a pleasant ride to some extent at least -- the roads had all been salted/plowed. Worst part of the trip was our own driveway. (grin) It's started raining outside again, though -- I sure hope the temperature is going up cause it's gonna freeze into a rink if it gets below 32 again!

Meanwhile, no purse, no money, no keys, no PDA (and missed at least one appointment today because of that). Silly how important such a small thing is to one's life, eh? :)

Puttering About

It was snowing this morning when I got up just before 8 a.m. (was forecast to snow 1 - 4 inches) so I called in and closed the store for today. I've been puttering about since then, doing odd jobs.

My desk has been in _dire_ need of cleaning off and reorganizing for some time (several months) so I started in on that first. By now, I've done 2/3rds of the surface and breathed quite a bit of who-know-how-old dust. <sneeze!> It's not only nice to have orderliness, but also insteresting to find things I'd totally forgotten about in the clutter (like several very nice CDs full of ready-to-print artwork I've purchased).

I went off and left my purse at the store last night when I came home around 8:30 (I was carrying a big tote bag with other stuff in it; I'm guessing my brain sort of substituted that for my usual purse carrying meme:). I'm thinking to get up and go in tomorrow a.m. -- I want to get a haircut (desperately needed:), pay some bills, make a bank deposit, and do some work at the store (still haven't made the Feb schedule and the month _is_ going to start soon:). 

Today, though, it is pleasant to putter and accomplish even small tasks.:)

I did want to mention a site I found recently online that concatenates quilting blogs -- Quilterblogs.com -- the blog writers request that their blogs be listed and the site puts the most recent entries up for you to view and click to read in their entirety, if you want. I've found some nifty blogs I probably would not have gotten to otherwise, given the number of them out there and my own lack of search time. ;) Go take a look and you might find some you'd like to follow regularly. I always enjoy finding Kindred Spirits online - I once made an art quilt called Transparent Boundaries that celebrated this particular power of the Internet (connecting folks who would not encounter each other if they were limited to their physical geography).

Think again

Well, it seems that my assumption about the inoculations was totally wrong. (sigh) My husband, my son, and I have all been down with nasty stomach bug. Definitely classic flu symptoms -- respiratory ailments, stomach and intestinal ailments, nasty fever. :P  Major :P

So many things I'd rather be doing. Been sick for seven days, not happy, not happy at all. :P

Unplanned ...

... but still appreciated! Today did not go at all how I had hoped/planned. I was _supposed_ to go a meeting of my art quilt group, FiberLectic, at one of our member's houses to watch the inauguration ceremonies together (and have our regularly scheduled meeting). (sigh)

Instead, I spent the day in bed. :P  Major :P

When I woke up this morning it took me several minutes to get my joints to move and I discovered, upon managing to get my body up, that I had a fever. I guess that it is due to the two inoculations that I had yesterday (well, I am hoping that is the case -- I really, really am tired of being sick). :P

I laid in bed, swaddled in blankets and trying to stay warm, and listened to the ceremonies and speeches on NPR. Now that I am up and a bit more active, I went out to look for visuals.

I'm not sure I can express how very, very happy and hopeful this entire event makes me feel. :)

More cotton fun!

I don't know why I didn't think of/remember this -- the cotton fiber is just cellulose (the same stuff that wood is made of). Cellulose is technically called a polysaccaride --a long-chain sugar polymer made from glucose subunits. This an extremely strong polymer, hard to digest back into its component sugars but full of energy (hence the utility of wood for burning and making heat:).

Here is one way to represent the cellulose molecule:

These are the sort of molecule diagrams I drew ad nauseum in college and graduate school. :) Another way to look at the molecule is like this:

Neither method is totally accurate, of course, they just show things that are too small for the eye to see. When you get plenty of the cellulose fibers wrapped together, you get things like cotton and maybe milkweed fluff. :)

Here is a small project I got cut out yesterday afternoon. It uses a lovely pink-rose fabric from Kaufman called Radiance that is 1/2 silk, 1/2 cotton (you can see a piece folded in half at the bottom of this screen). I also fussy cut four 'petals' from Kona Bay Japanese sateen prints (two of them):

Here is a shot of the radiance alone -- I hope you can see the shine/shadowing (I had to shut off the flash on my camera 'cause it was blinding me:):

Here is what I am making with these pretties:

I thought this little bag was cute. :) The pattern comes in four sizes and I chose the next-to-smallest one to make for myself. The designer's description of the sizes made me laugh -- grapefruit, melon, soccor ball, basketball. :) I'm making the 'melon' size.

The pink Radiance will be the lining most of the time -- the bag is reversible -- as I don't want to subject it to real hard wear. ;) Cross your fingers for me to get it done soon! :)

Wicked!

It has been cruelly cold here in Maryland this past week, like much of the rest of the country. As far as I know, the coldest it has actually been in Columbia/Catonsville is 8°F -- which is dreadfully, wickedly cold for here! I can only remember once other time in my years here (since 1978) that it has been that cold (memory could be wrong, but I'm sticking to that:). (brrrr!)

Today was a mildly pleasant 30°, and sunny. :)

I have had a nice weekend -- I spent the waking hours yesterday while I was here working on three little 'prayer' quilts. That's how I'm thinking of them -- they were birthday gifts for three members of one of my sewing circles (Stitch & Tell). I intend them to be small fabric prayers for joy and abundance in the coming year. Here are the three little bits:

The background fabric for each one is something I have painted/dyed/stenciled, etc. myself. The stripes are hand painted by me ... and the figures hand drawn (using SetaScrib fabric markers) ... and then hand embroidery and machine quilting/finishing. :)

Here are the three birthday girls, Amy, Nancy and Peggy:

Sew & Tell met today so for my sewing (I always allow myself to sew on my own projects -- we are meeting here at my store:) I worked on a new purse for myself from a new-to-the-store pattern called The Tulip Bag. So cute! Didn't take any photos of that, but haven't done anything yet except cut the parts out (ever have a day when your brain just absolutely _refused_ to wake up?:). Will photo more as it progresses (soon, I hope, I want to use this bag!:)

Summing UP ...

.... today. Hmm. Well, kinda mixed results. :) I was pretty scattered today and had a hard time keeping my mind on track -- kept getting distracted. In defense of myself, it was one of those days when you keep getting phone calls that are supposedly 'important' that turn out to be telemarketing ... and requests from customers that really don't make any sense (um, I think they probably make sense to the requester, just can't get my head around them well enough to respond).

I got to be very late last night so I let myself sleep in today. Got up and out around 11 a.m. -- had to go by the post office to mail two things off to customers. Then went by my local neighborhood MickeyD's to get something to drink on my drive to the store. The sweet young latina working the drive through window was obviously miserable -- she was wearing a coat, scarf and hat but no gloves. When I asked if she had any, she shook her head and looked sad to me so I reached into my pocket and gave her mine. (shrug) She might have thrown them away when I drove off, I cannot know that. I hope she wore them (even though they were not new) 'cause she sure looked unhappy when I drove up, poor woman. She also looked pregnant, but don't have enough Spanish to ask personal questions, even if it weren't rude. :)

I spent a lot of time at the store today on telephone calls (making and receiving), web work (new stuff for the blog, email requests to the webmaster, etc), and helping customers. If I didn't love doing it all so much, I might complain. (grin)

Since it is Thursday, my friend Barbara Bennett came in, as usual, to sew with me. We didn't actually sew at all tonight -- I paged through her pattern book, finding the rest of the designs I need to finish my Mom's quilt (I do own a personal copy of all these patterns, I just cannot find them at the moment) -- and Barbara spent a good portion of the time selecting, rejecting and find different fabrics for a quilt project she needs to start soon. By the end of the evening, I had found all the designs I think I need and she had settled on a really nice combination of prints for the quilt -- general success all around! :) Sometimes it helps to have realistic goals. LOL

I just watched a GREAT You Tube video on Sharon B's blogsite (Pin Tangle) -- it's about keeping a journal/art journal by a woman named Suzi Blue. Great ad for the benefits of journaling and art -- and the woman is cute, cute, cute. :) Gotta go look at some more of her work on YT. I think I'll get out my journal and get back to it. :)

Still no email at home. (sigh)

GRRRR!

At the moment, I am _totally_ without email at home. (big frown) My sweetie decided to do an upgrade on my computer (admittedly I asked him to:) and managed to somehow blow away my email files. He _thinks_ they can be recovered ... but until they are, my home email is not working. ;P

Anyone who needs to send me email will have to talk to me at my store -- quilter@seminolesampler.com

Sighes!

Antique W.I.P.

In keeping with this time of year, I have a _very_ old work-in-progress that I am working on again. I found the bits for this (all nicely organized in a notebook:) when I was cleaning my office a week before Christmas. For quite some time it had been misplaced -- I haven't worked on it at all since about 2001. 

This is the first four sections of a twelve part block of the month program I subscribed to in 1997 -- it was offered at The Quilt Block in Dayton, MD and I started this quilt thinking that it would be a 50th anniversary gift for my parents. (At the time, their anniversary was four years in the future:)

Since I started this, my Dad passed away ... so I am thinking to finish up the parts I have completed into a lap quilt for my Mom (oh, I still cannot find the other eight b.o.m. kits). It is going to take some fiddling to make this fit into a whole, but I do have access via my friend Barbara Bennett  (who also took the b.o.m.) to the other patterns. I am thinking to make more bits to fit into the empty spaces and then border the entire quilt with the pretty blue print I have used for sashing.

I think I am probably going to quilt this one by check. (grin)

More About Cotton

Gosh, sometimes you hit the motherlode with a Google search! I found a GREAT page with info about cotton. First, here is a good photo of cotton growing in the field, ready for harvest:

At this page (http://www.cotton.org/pubs/cottoncounts/fieldtofabric) I found a great lot of info on growing, harvesting, processing and using cotton -- both of the fiber and the seed. They gave the whole thing as a pdf so I'll share it with you:  Download Cotton-From-Field-to-Fabric-129k-PDF

They sure make things sound grand. :)

Now for some less positive news about cotton. :P

Huh, the Aral Sea is in Uzbeckistan (not sure I spelled that correctly)...it has lost more than half its surface area over the past 40 years due to irrigation of cotton (that's what happens when you try to grow something in an unsuitable place). Here's how that looks:

There was a really good article in National Geographic about the issue a couple of years ago. Apparently the old Soviet regime was in charge when this disaster developed. :P That antique mind-set that thinks the earth cannot be effected by human action is clearly wrong. 

Now, cotton can be beautiful, no doubt about it (the w.i.p. I showed in the photos earlier today is entirely made of cotton fibers -- well, except for the rayon ones I used in some parts of the quilting:). Beautiful colors ... beautiful 'hand' or feel to the fabric. (happy sighes) If only we could get people to be sensible and responsible in the way they _grow_ the stuff!!