Fiber and Pulp

Creative Days 25, 26 and 27

My neighbor has black-eyed susans blooming in her front yard - surely a summer flower as well as Maryland's state icon. Yesterday (Sunday evening) as we were leaving the store, I saw three brightly colored Goldfinches sitting in the fencing right in front of our car (parked across the lot from the store's front door, near the community tennis grounds). I haven't seen goldfinches for several years so I take the abundance of yellow as a happy sign. :)

What have I been doing? Breathing an excess of gray fluff and dust as I clean my office! :P (hack, gack) :P We generate a lot of cotton fluff in my store since we tear the fabric to 'cut' for customers. I sure had an extra supply hidden away in my office corners. :P I'm not quite done with hauling things out and reorganizing, but almost. 

I had to take a break to breathe and to work on the July staffing schedule today. I managed to pack up several boxes of goodies for various folks, too - mostly books, patterns and fabrics. Two boxes to my Mom (one of those for my Aunt Jean), one to my sister, a letter to my Aunt Ruby, and one to my niece Amy ... oh, and one for a donation to the Mid-Appalachian Quilters Seminar (not having to do with my office, just what needed doing today:). UPS cleans up, too. LOL

I've been working in the evenings at home on finishing my bunny mat - have started to embroider the edges onto a black wool backing fabric. I am making a floral meadow kind of border around the whole thing ... and I think I have figured out how to scallop the black wool when I'm finished with the embroidery.

Getting this mat done is kind of a minor miracle when you consider that this entire project has been growing as it goes along, with a minimum of actual measurement or planning. Seems to be the way I work best, eh? :) One good result of my (almost) month of focusing on creativity is that my attention span seems to have improved (fingers crossed)!

One benefit I hope to gain from cleaning out my mess in the office is that I now know just how many projects in progress I do actually have. My plan is to work on each one I've kept until it is finished - having them all in plain sight will help me remember how much fun they were to start (and hopefully how much fun they will each be to finish, too). (fingers crossed)

:) Linda

Creative Day 24: Visiting Friends

Aren't these hydrangeas breath taking? :) I spent my lunch hour yesterday at a friend's house - Cindy had an enormous hydrangea right by her front door. When I walked up to knock, the colors on that bush stopped me in my tracks. So beautiful! :)

She cut some for me as I was leaving and I'm enjoying them right now - had to put them in my insulated water glass for lack of a better vase at work. :) Don't they match my glass perfectly? Can you tell that I love that color? :) My Nina and the mail 'out' tray are in good company. :)

I don't get out much in my daily life - pretty much spend my time at home or at the store - so it was a welcome and rare change for me to go to lunch at Cindy's yesterday. What a pleasure it is to have friends who enjoy the same kinds of hobbies that you do! In your quest for increased creativity, do not overlook finding like-minded people to spend time with - it is stimulating to your own creative impulses to see what other people make!

Once I did get home last night, I worked on putting a base layer of felted wool under my bunnies - now I have to stitch it down and decide on exactly how to finish off the outer edges. :)

Linda

Creative Day 22: My Day Off

This picture was taken with my mobile phone - please forgive the not-very-good quality! I spent some time this afternoon finishing (as far as I can at home) my bunny wool embroidery. Here's a close-up:

I also decided to work on a piece in progress (WIP Alert!:). We got new living room furniture this past Christmas and the cat fur is already starting to build up. (sigh)

I took the eight squares of woven fabric strips I had started in my Cloth Whispering class with Jude Hill and put them together into a small cover for the center back of our sofa. Our black kitty likes to sleep there (the pillow makes a nice hammock-y shape for her) and the black fur was getting out of hand. :)

I sewed the squares together (each one is about 10"x10") and, after cleaning as much fuzz off the sofa's upholstery as I could, spread the resulting cloth on the center back. I saw the cat go to sleep on top of it later (wasn't sure she would - cats can be very picky about their sleeping conditions:) so now we have a more easily cleaned alternative. Fur can cover the small spread and be washed away.

My son and I went out early in the day (to buy more needles for his loving but diabetic kitty) but the heat was so nasty that I decided to stay indoors and do needlework on my day off. Did fall asleep for a while in the nice coolth downstairs, gratefully joined by both cats. :) I guess they don't mind noise - my son said he could hear me snoring all the way upstairs with his bedroom door closed. LOL

Linda

Creative Day 20: What the ...??

With thanks to this charity site for the photo, today has been  a bit more chaotic than my usual. <sigh> I cannot find my photos of our cats on my computer as I type this ... so I borrowed the photo above to show you our elderly lady cat, Bright Eyes (this photo looks a lot like her - she's a 'domestic long hair' brown and gray tabby).

She is in her mid-teens (octogeneric, as cats go:) and is diabetic ... and belongs to my son who loves her (and is responsible for her feeding and care).  Pay attention, she _does_ come into today's story. :)

I started my day with a meeting at an art quilting colleague's house - along with two other quilters - to work on a contract format for a traveling exhibit we have been putting together (this is a small art quilt show from the MetroThreads group).

We labored over forms for about three hours and finally hammered out something we thought was reasonable ... based on the contracts used by some other groups and on our own experiences. (whew!)

As I was driving to my shop after the meeting (and thinking about what I needed to do there for the day), I got a phone call from my son who was in a mild panic about his kitty (reference above:) .... who was clearly showing signs of having too low a blood sugar level (staggering and falling over, being lethargic).

Sooo, I turned my car around and went home to get him and the kitty and take them to our vet's hospital (back very close to where I had already been at the meeting earlier that morning). 

The vet kept her all afternoon and measured her blood glucose levels (which were very low when we took her in - did you know that a cat's 'normal' blood glucose levels are the same as people's? 80 - 120 is 'normal' for both creatures). Her blood glucose was 26 when we got her to the vet! Probably she did not eat much breakfast this morning (around 8:30 a.m.), when she had her first shot of the day ... while they had her in the surgery, the vet actually fed her some fast-uptake glucose-producing meds to stabilize her levels at something approaching normal.

We had to go _back_ to the vet's at 6:30 p.m. to pick Bright Eyes up (and get the post-visit treatment orders). I'm not used to driving during 'rush hour', so that trip was a bit stressful. :P

So, by now the whole day has gone by and I've done nothing on my own professional list of chores - but have contributed to the group exhibit and played angelic rescuer to our furry girl.

Here it is the end of the day and now I cannot even _find_ my daily journal so that I can make an entry before I go to bed tonight. (where could it be? I was writing in it just last night!)

Depending on how you look at it, I've either been creative several times today or not at all. :P

 

:) Linda

Creative Day 18: Silly-ness Abounds

I tell you, challenges lead me into waters that I would never expect! LOL! I have been tasked to create a self-portrait block - of myself as a _bird_ doing something 'beach-y!' Self-portrait I have never tried, never mind an _action_ self-portrait. :)

I decided to choose a chicken as my bird self ... and the silliest thing I could imagine myself doing on a beach is surfing (I am NOT a risk taker by nature:). Soooo, here is my first sketch of a surfing chicken. LOL I think there is a bit of refinement needed before I actually sew this block - but the whole idea is making me giggle. Hopefully the person for whom this challenge is intended will laugh at it, too.

:) Linda

Creativity Day 16: Wild Blue

Today I proved once again to myself that I am not a drawer. :) I can trace, luckily! I am making an applique block to be included in a group quilt and my subject was 'Emu.' None of what I show above is sewn down, yet, but it is all ready to be appliqued. I tea-dyed the ultrasuede legs of the mommy and baby emus so, soon as they dry, I'll be getting my needle out.

This project turned out to require slightly more 'art-y-ness' than I thought it would. Had to use my Pigma pens to do the markings on the adult and baby bodies and on the legs. Then I had to tea-dye the legs to knock back the brightness of their coloring (was too pale). I'm debating whether to add black seed bead eyes once the applique is done.

I managed to finish calculating the yardage requirements for my Quest quilt design so we can start making the sample - took a couple of hours of diligent computer work. :) The first thing I found when I walked into my office this afternoon was that the slide out shelf for my computer desk had fallen off. (Sigh) Hope that can be fixed - my desk feels naked without the extra work surface. :)

My order of shelving units arrived today so I hope to be able to start cleaning the back half of my office tomorrow. Wish me energy - I'll need it!

:) Linda

Creativity Day 14: Buried Treasure

Today I finished sewing up and mailing off my fiber postcards for the Buried Treasure swap on 3 Creative Studios. I thought I'd share the four cards I received with you. :)

The card above came from Viv in the UK. The back says, 'My buried treasure is inspired by the story of this plant, the oldest known seed to sprout. It is a type of date palm sometimes called the Methuselah.'

This is from Diane, also from the UK and says, 'Here's my first effort at the swap. Hope it won't be the last.' Me, too, Diane!:)

This happy flower is from Vicki in Montpelier, Va (not too far away from me, especially compared to the UK:).

Finally, this sweet scene is from Maureen in Sunnyvale, Ca. 'After a long winter, my buried treasure is the collection of tender green grass that shoots up in the spring.'

I do enjoy trading fabric postcards! So much more fun to get in my mailbox than bills or junk mail. :). I've signed up for the next go-round (the theme of which I forget at this moment).

I also managed to get my squares all cut and packaged for the red and white charm square (5") swap - mailing them on my way home, too. (whew!)

I sat today and calculated the rest of the yardage requirements for my Quilters Quest design ... and we saw our Checker rep today (it's always a pleasure to see Bob, such a nice guy:). Skip and I have to stop on the way home and pick up our Neon from the 'fixers' and then I'm going to do some more embroidery on my bunnies - I'm liking how the piece is shaping up.

I saw a friend today and she asked me if I felt well - said I look tired. (sigh) Guess you can't hide it at my age. (sniff)

:) Linda

Creativity After the Fact: Days 11, 12, 13

Today I noticed both Chicory and Queen Anne's Lace blooming in the field across the parking lot from my store. I adore QA's Lace (wild carrot:) and have been an admirer of chicory since I was a small child (though I do _not_ like the taste of the stuff; then again, I don't like coffee, either, which chicory is often substituted for). Such beautiful blue flowers!

Well, Saturday I did a tiny bit of creative work - wrote about a half page in my daily journal and drew a small picture (of fish and seaweed, to go with the picture already in my journal:). That was all the energy I had to use on the production - spent most of the day horizontal again. :P

Sunday I was scheduled to work on the sales floor. No one else on my staff could work with me (this happens once or twice a year:) so my sweet husband and I manned the place together, alone. I was fine to work (seemed to be, anyway, though I did sit a bit more than usual) but the store was _very, very_ quiet. (sigh) I think all my customers either went to the quilt show in Annapolis or stayed home to avoid the weather/rain.

We had thunderstorms around 5 - 6 pm. - when I was a little girlie, my Dad used to call the water droplets that bounce up during a hard rain 'ducks'. These drops were geese and swans!! :) Very heavy rainfall. When we got home, I fell down on the bed around 7 pm and slept straight through until this morning. (whew!)

Today I am feeling ok, my usual self. Which is a _good_ thing as I had to drive down to Gaithersburg to Capital Quilts for a shop owner's planning meeting for our area shop hop. It is about an hour drive each way, down Interstate 95, around the Washington Beltway and up I270 to the Shady Grove Road exit. The weather is glorious today - mid 70's and sunny. Wish I could freeze it this way! :)

Since I drove back from the meeting and have been here at the store, have just been chatting and recovering from two hours driving in the car (my muscles were vibrating for a half hour after I 'landed':) ... also visiting with customers and staff. Some days are more productive than others! I did manage to finish cutting up the 2 1/2 yards of red and white fabric into 5" charms for the online swap. I need to mail that out in the morning. :)

I think I will go back to doing the embroidery on my bunny mat when I get home. :) Tomorrow I have another company rep coming in the morning and need to go back to calculating fabric yardage needs for the Quest quilt in the afternoon (I'm about halfway through my calculations, assuming that my brain was not being innumerate last week!:).

Linda

Creative Day 10: Maintenance and Down Time

Today may only be June 10th, but the season is definitely SUMMER here in coastal Maryland! Today I saw pink clover blooming by the cluster post box stand for my street. (Thanks to this photographer for the great photo!)

Clover has always been a summer alert for me, personally. When we would go to my paternal grandparents' home in the Virginia mountains for summer, there was always white clover and pink clover blooming in the grass of their lawn and along the driveway verges. Nothing says summer to me like clover blooming!

Also the weather today was one of the more 'wicked' types of typical summer days here - way over 95 degrees (F) and extremely humid ... with a late afternoon thunderstorm of down wash nature. It rained like that last night, too, and as I drove home after the storm around about 9:20 p.m, there was mist/fog/extra humidity rising up from the asphalt road surfaces. Humidity thy middle name is Maryland! :)

I spent most of today in bed. Woke up *blink* at seven this morning with a throbbing headache. When normal meds had not stopped that by 9, I knew it would be a day of involuntary rest. (sigh) This is what usually happens to me when I zoom through time with way, way too much activity - my body pulls the plug. :)

Still, I did manage to do a bit of (horizontal) creative work today. I finished knitting a baby Cocoon for my niece's new baby boy ... and did a spare but pleasing-to-me entry in my journal (no camera, still, at home - photos later). Watched the last couple of episodes of The Dresden Files (for the umpty-eth time) on Netflix (still horizontal) and read email. Soon as I finish this post I'm back to bed.

Don't know if I will be strong enough tomorrow to go to the store (will wait to see how I feel in the morning:) ... but I have to work on the sales floor on Sunday, so gotta recover. 

Oh, got the beautiful package of hand dyed wools and pattern for a tropical colored Candle Mat from Wooly Lady in today's mail (my son brought it in). Lush! Color always draws me on, creatively. :)

Linda

Creative Day 8: More Group Inspiration and Wednesday WIP

I am making myself dizzy with all the busy-ness over the past couple of days. Some weeks are boring but this one definitely has NOT been! :) Starting with the end of my day yesterday, let me share some photos with you.

Last night the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild met at a member's home and shared with one another our Kaufman Charm Challenge quilts. Some were finished (you can see mine here if you don't remember what I made:) and some were still Works In Progress (like the one made by our hostess above). (See, wasn't that a clever segue into Wednesday WIP? LOL) Here are the others we saw:

 

This project will be pretty bright and happy when Sharon finishes it! We convinced her (fingers crossed!) to join the two halves of her blocks with random color matches (instead of the way this photo looks). ;) Go, girl!!

This is Mary's WIP for the challenge. She is working in the style of a contemporary painter whose work she admired at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently (I can't wait to see the finish!:).

We met in Owings Mills, MD - an area I am largely unfamiliar with. Because I was traveling at the peak of rush hour, it actually took me 57 minutes to cover the 14.8? miles from my store to her house. What a nice area it is up there (western section of Baltimore County)! :)

Before I went to the meeting, I spent some time working at my store and then some time trying to finish my Work In Progress. Pretend it is still Wednesday, here's what I am struggling to get in the mail. :)

I joined a fabric postcard swap on 3 Creative Studios (the swap theme is Buried Treasure) and am almost finished with my cards to mail. I went looking for some clear envelopes to send them in yesterday (with absolutely no luck) - I once bought a package of 50 but have used them up. (sigh) My postcards are too dimensional and I'm afraid they will get eaten by the Post Office Snail (a.k.a. sorting machinery). 

I wish I could share with you how wonderful these cards _feel_! The top layer (through which I have cut to reveal the underneath fabric) is made from my first Nuno felt results. Soft and luscious and wonderful to sew/embroider on. These pieces are definitely still WIPs. I need to finish adding some beading and then trim and bind them so I can mail them off to the other swappers. :)

No end of fun! I was so tired by the time I got home last night around 10:15 p.m. ... my direct creative effort for yesterday was writing/drawing a half page in my daily journal. Then I fell into bed. (whew!)

:) Linda