Fiber and Pulp

Inertia

I don't know if I have posted this photo before - it is a pair of battling staghorn beetles by Charlie Harper (or maybe Charley?). I like Harper's art quite a lot and have been looking online and in person for yardage of the fabric printed with his designs ... without success, so far. Either it is extremely popular (more than the company planned) or they printed a tiny bit and it is now passe. Wish I knew which. :) Kinda out of the fabric loop these days. :P

I am pondering (I think I have mentioned before) my Crazy Quilting Journal (2014) topic and I have decided on 'bugs' - I think the artwork above might make a nice piece in one of my journal bits. (Note to self: check to see what Spoonflower can print of his art - doubtful of copyrights?) Gotta get going on that as January is rapidly coming to a close (slow down already!!).

Yesterday and today have convinced me that I need a new structure for my daily life. I have descended into outright immobillity with my doings - get up sometime between 11 a.m. and noon, eat and mess about online/on computer for three or four hours, do one housework task, then go back to bed. :( Major :( Time to instill a new routine. sigh. 

I went to the bowling alley again tonight with my sweetheart. Tuesday night's league is a very much more sociable one (Socialites is actually the name of the league:). I used to bowl with him on this league a decade ago. I enjoyed meeting his current team members and also enjoyed watching the bowling.

Gotta get that new knee installed so I can play again. I expect I will have to re-learn everything I used to know about the execution of the game. I remember the principles but not the details ... and, of course, I will need new shoes and a ball (mine has been redrilled twice since I quit and I'm not even sure we still have it). When I started bowling (on a woman's daytime league with one of my next door neighbors), my average was 49. By the time I quit, my average was around 149 (was in two leagues then and you set your average for each league independently). I even bowled a few games over 200 (considered pretty good scores:).

I did get quite a bit of people interaction time tonight - which is good for me. I thought I would go to my quilt guild meeting on Monday night but forgot until it was too late/cold to go out. I'll try again on Thursday morning (my guild meets weekly with one evening group and one morning one - I might as well attend each one). I've been carrying my knitting to bowling but I think I will make up an embroidery project to carry to quilt guild. :)

Things are moving along a bit with my fiduciary responsibilities...the probate order had been signed and I have at least six phone calls that need to be made tomorrow. :P Talked to the appraiser today, have to talk tomorrow to the real estate agent, the insurance agent, the social security office about my brother's application ... and probably some other things I am forgetting at this moment. :P

 

:) Linda

Weekend Doings?

I have clamshell patterns on my mind lately. The one shown above is a tiled floor mosaic from Roman ruins in the Middle East somewhere. I love the way they imply peacock feathers or maybe exotic ferns. The colors are lovely and peaceful, too. At some point in the past I saw someone in the blogsphere working on piecing feathered clamshells - uh, clamshell shapes with an arc of small triangles across the top. The image has stuck to my mind (unlike the source:). I have a considerable collection of Japanese fabric scraps leftover from making quilts ... and I'm thinking of doing large sized clamshell pattern with them. Maybe with some 'solid' colored ones with applique and embroidery interspersed? Probably I should be sketching ideas in a journal instead of daydreaming them. :)

Friday I went to the store to wait for a delivery (our paycheck company sent the staff's paychecks). I _thought_ I would sew while I was there - I need to piece the African hexie quilt's backing so I can take it to Daria to be long-armed. Sadly, I could not bear to be at the store for long - as soon as the delivery came I left. sigh. Most days I'm ok with the progression to closure but I guess it was getting to me on Friday. 

Saturday Skip and I went to the store - he needed to do book keeping chores and I met Inge S. and Sandy McD. They are the coordinators of the Jessup women's prison quilting group. I completely forgot about that charity sewing circle when I was inviting guilds in to choose 30 yards of fabric each. So, they came in Saturday morning and we spent some time pulling out goodies (such as were left:) for the sewing ladies. Needles, thimbles, a couple of the shop's cutting mats and rotary cutters, lots of fabric. Then I had to figure out how to mark those goods as donated in our point of sale software. :P By the time I finished that chore, Skip was ready to go home. 

I was fine at the shop on Saturday. Don't know why Friday was so hard. shrug.

Today I slept in until almost noon. My bed was so warm and cosy I hardly wanted to get up.:) I decided two things (after consultation with my guys) about Sundays for the future - I will do no housework or obligation stuff on Sundays in the future and Sunday will be the day that my son and I spend together each week. For the most part, Hugh spends his time either writing or online or both and I see him for only a few minutes in any given day. I enjoy his company (and he seems to enjoy mine:) so I think we might do things together - shopping, museums, movies, etc. - on Sundays in the future. Try, anyway.

My poor husband is still suffering with sleep troubles - he has a hard time breathing because of his sinuses and so he keeps falling asleep and waking up all night/day when he is at home. I keep trying to encourage him to go see his doctor for advice ... but he moves on his own time line. sigh.

The cold is still ever-present here in Maryland. The snow is still on the ground and the temps are in the teens. brr!

 

:) Linda

Cold Blue!

The last two days have had very similar themes - cold and snowy. BRRR! I am not so used to temps in the teens as I once was ... and, with wind chill counted in, we've had temps as low as zero this week. Shivers. Although this kind of weather is not totally foreign, it _is_ pretty unusual in the midAtlantic area.

The photo above is very blue in tint compared to the way my eyes saw the color (much more red and white) - even with color correction, the camera can only do so much I guess. :) Yesterday the sun shone bright and blue (one 'up' side to a high cell:) so I decided to go out for a while. I had a doctor's appointment down in Maple Lawn (specialist) so, afterwards, I drove by Prints Charming but they were closed for the snow. You have to know that _everything_ stops when it snows here in Maryland to understand that, I guess. :) 

Since that fun shopping op was a bust, I drove down to Savage Mill and walked around indoors - visiting The Queen's Ink and Bead Soup. The Queen is one of my favorite shops - Patti Euler, the owner, and I often comiserate on the perils of shop ownership. :)

I picked up a copy of Artful Blogger magazine which I had seen before but never read - the photography and printing quality is really high ... and a watercolor sketchbook that is about 5" x 7" and filled with 140 pound cold press paper. Now I have to get some transparent watercolors (I have gouache which are opaque) so I can practice/learn more about watercolor painting. Besides the fact that I just like the way watercolors look (especially when combined with pen and ink), I _think_ that is the on-paper method most similar to painting on fabric which I would like to get better at doing. :)

My stroll down to Bead Soup (which has moved to a different site in the mall since the last time I visited many moons ago:) was similarly fruitful. They have a great selection of colored jump rings in a couple of sizes and of rubber 0-rings for doing 'chain maille' types of jewelry. I chose a (free!) tutorial which they printed out for me and bought the supplies to work on it. I've been fascinated with chain designs since my father-in-law was playing with them twenty or so years ago ... I _am_ slow to get to some projects, but I usually manage to get there. :)

The photo at the beginning of this post is the sidewalk in front of the Queen's Ink entry. I like the way the snow fills in the 'grout' lines on the brickwork and I'd like to do the same thing in fabric. What I especially like about it is that the 'grouting' comes and goes - it isn't solid the way a tiled floor is. I have to figure out how to do that with fabric.

I keep thinking I will get some much-needed housework done but I have not yet been able to push myself to do more than routine chores (dish washing, bed making). There is so much clutter and untidyness in our home I can barely stand it ... yet I am not making any moves, yet, to clear it up. sigh. Every day I try again ... sooner or later I will manage, I know, but I wish I knew how to speed myself up! I'd rather be obsessing about other things, honestly (like arranging my studio at home to be functional again so I can sew!).

Today I had an appointment to get my hair cut - it hasn't been done since Halloween. Generally I need to get my hair cut every five or six weeks to maintain a style (such style as I _can_ maintain, anyway:) ... every four weeks in the summer. My hair grows pretty fast. Knowing that, my cutter was not surprised to see how shaggy my hair had gotten. :) She is a true master at her craft, though, and had my mess tamed in a half hour or so - much softer and more feminine. ;) Guess I should have taken a selfie to share, but didn't think of it (my new vocab for the week - 'selfie':).

After the cutting I drove back to the downtown area of Columbia for my weekly weigh-in. Lost only 1/2 pound this week (but at least it was DOWN:). Plodding onward. :) Hmm, my nutritionist wants me to focus on keeping a food journal this week ... I'm going to try hard because it makes me more mindful of what, when and where I eat. I figure the calories I use keeping my poor old body warm are a fair substitute for the exercise I am not getting with all this snow impeding my walking. :)

Years ago, when my kiddos were little tykes, I got my husband involved in bowling. I've had to stop for about a decade due to my joint/arthritis issues, but he still goes twice a week. Tonight I decided to go with him to cheer him/his team on. He was so obviously happy that I was taking an interest, I think I'll go more often. Poor man is way too prone to crawling into his virtual cave and ignoring the world - I think he needs some TLC right now, too.

:) Linda

PS As I was getting into the car at the bowling alley, I knocked my glasses off my nose (such a KLUTZ!) and one of the lenses fell out. I guess I will be starting tomorrow with a visit to the eye doctor's office. :P

Snowy Day

This image might give you a clue (along with the post title:) to what today was like here in Columbia - it started snowing early this morning and snowed all day. If you click on the image above, it should take you to the gallery image on Paula Nadelstern's website (and there is a link there to the fabulous snowflake man website, too:). I love the diversity and beauty of snowflakes ... somewhere inside I have a snowflake quilt simmering. :)

I woke up really early today, for me, around 7:30 a.m. It was way colder than normal in my bedroom (probably about 60 degrees Farenheit) so I burrowed deeper into my nice warm quilt-y nest and went back to sleep. I _thought_ I might get some housework or maybe sewing/embroidery done today ... but I ended up begin incredibly lazy and just reading and staying warm all day. I did manage a little bit of knitting (I'm still working on a lacy shawl) while watching streaming videos from Netflix.

Maybe tomorrow? The Caring Hands group from my guild is supposed to meet tomorrow but I am guessing that the snow will cancel the meeting - our neighborhood streets have not been plowed, yet, and that means the street crews are struggling to keep up with the accumulation. Hope they have warm trucks to work in!

I also have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon that I would prefer not to miss ... but if they have not plowed, I won't be going out. If it is plowed, I have no problems with driving on snowy streets - but my poor old car is not up to trail blazing (not to mention my poor old body!:).

:) Linda

Productive Holiday

I actually think this fabric is pretty 'ugly' (hmmm - drab colors ... the print/artwork is ok as I do rather like botannical flower depiction)...that did not keep me from choosing it for a quilt backing however. :)

Today being a 'non-family' holiday, my friend Barbara B and I got together to sew at my shop (well, the ghost of its former self, but still having lots of big tables to spread out across for sewing:). I pieced the last two hexie rows of African prints for my quilt top (no photo - too big to wrestle onto the gray wall again; I'll share it after quilting).

That actually took me about three hours (gotta choose carefully - that 'scrappy' look is not as easy to create as you might think:). After the piecing was finished I could measure it for a backing. I am planning to quilt this one by check, so I knew I'd need a larger than usual backing for the longarm process. Barbara (who loves to shop for me and succeeds nicely as my chooser:) found several possible bolts from the maybe 40 bolts left on the shelves - but after I figured out that I needed 9 yards (it's a largish queen sized top), the choice was down to two bolts (that had enough fabric), and I chose the floral. :)

I cut off three 3 yard chunks (and there are maybe 2 yards left on that bolt:) but I'll piece the backing another day. Quilting with intention is hard work! We sewed from about 10 until 6 (with a 45 minute break for lunch) and that was a good day's work. :)

Barbara was way more productive than me - she put the binding on a really cool black, white and hot pink big quilt ... bordered her small African animal skin Trip ... and ?? Rats, at this moment I cannot remember what the third job she finished was. SIGH. 

For a day when the store was supposed to be closed, we were interruped four times. Once by a delivery guy bringing employee tax info from our payroll company, once by my private student who needed help with spray basting her sashiko blocks, once by a friend picking up a round robin project to take it to the owner, and once by an employee who left her knitting in our staff closet the last time she was in to work. :)

It is supposed to snow tomorrow - I do NOT have to go anywhere (YEAH!) so I might just stay in my jammies all day and watch it snow. How cozy! I need to get started on my crazy quilt journal project, now that I've decided what I will create (each month a different beautiful insect block:).

Linda

Remnants

This photo shows history ... well, at least the photo's scene is not what reality looks like right now. :) This is one corner of my store, _before_ the closing sale began, showing the kind of display shelving we had for our fabric bolts.

The past seven days have been historic (a little more than in the sense that all days create history:) - a week ago today (Saturday, January 11th) we started selling our shop fixtures in a major way. That day the fellows from Baltimore Brass walked down to our shop (theirs is farther down the Mews sidewalk, near the end of the warehouse) and bought our slat wall. Just unscrewed the long taps that attached the slatwall pieces (about 4'x8' each, nine of them) and carried them off, piece by piece. (Note to self: go down and see what they've done with it!:)

That day was a busy one in the shop, too - quilters can never resist a bargain and 50% off on fabric/books/patterns is a major bargain. :) Sunday was equally busy.

Monday I drove all day, from my home in Columbia to southeastern Ohio where my brothers live (on my Mom's farm in Jackson County). I have got this trip down to a routine - usually stop to eat/rest at the same places, buy gas at the same stops, etc. It takes me about 7 hours to do the drive (which includes two half hour stops to eat/use the bathroom and one re-gassing stop, typically). The weather was not wonderful - it started raining right at the West Virginia border (literally where the Welcome to Wild, Wonderful West Virgina sign was). Since the temperature was in the low 40's, it was nasty and cold all the rest of the way. :P I left home around 11:30 a.m. and so got to the farm right at 6:30 p.m. (Second note to self: try not to arrive after dark in a place with no street lights).

I had to get up at 7 a.m. the next morning (seriously o-dark-thirty for me!) to drive my youngest brother, Kevin, to Chilicothe where the regional Social Security offices are located. We got there at 8:55 a.m. for a 9:10 a.m. appointment. (whew!) Kevin is mildly retarded (oxygen deprivation at birth due to forceps delivery - would have been a Ceasarian these days I'm sure) and my purpose was to help him apply for dependent survivor's benefits and SSI so he will have living expenses (since he does not work - he has been taken care of by my parents all his life).

The folks at SS were very helpful - matter-of-fact but helpful - and I have my fingers crossed that he will be awarded support. No matter what happens in the future, he needs to have some kind of financial security. After we finished the application stuff, we stopped and had breakfast then drove the two hours back to the farm. I ended up having to take a nap (just could not manage to stay awake with losing that much sleep; I felt bad about the nap until I found out that Kevin took one, too:).

What was left of the day (Tuesday) I spent with my brother Alan, going over the bills and such for the household. It was still really chilly but no more rain. Wednesday I slept in during the morning and then went into Jackson (the nearest 'big' town with a population of about 35,000 people). My brother Alan and I went to the bank (to deposit some more money for them), to see my Mom's lawyer (we are _still_ waiting for the judge to sign the probate papers so I will have the fiduciary power to settle Mom's estate matters), and to the Jobs/Family Services office for the county to give them a copy of Kevin's applications from the previous day (no idea why they want/need those, but they were required). By the time we were done with those errands, I was exhausted again. :P

Thursday was gray and cold - I got up around 9:30, packed, ate breakfast and left to drive home. Back I went to Columbia, stopping twice to eat and once to gas up, as usual. Seven hours on the road, tired when I got home. When I drive alone, I tend to spend much of my time looking around (to keep myself awake) and taking mental notes about the scenery.

Lately I've been trying to develop an appreciation for the winter color palette (as shown in eastern seaboard mixed deciduous forestland anyway:) - it seems to me that the muted neutrals of the Japanese 'Daiwabo' taupe fabrics are very much winter's colors. Soft grays, beiges, browns, occasional black, rust, dark green, pale blue. I am coming to appreciate the subtle beauty of winter (snowless winter, anyway:) - I have always thought a snowy landscape beautiful! I think I need to make some small landscape pieces, maybe using the accidental landscape methods that Karen Eckmeier has made popular, using taupe fabrics (heaven knows I have enough of them!:).

This trip I saw one 'vision' that I am trying to retain - as I was driving westward on Interstate 70, near Hagerstown, I happened to glance ahead at the horizon. The mountains were looking very magical just then - there was thick mist down between each ridgeline and only the ridge tops were visible. Four layers of mountainous lines just floated in the sky. Really cool! _That_ I want to reproduce on fabric - probably with painting 'cause that is the fastest way I know to make it. Sadly I could not take a photo (driving, remember?:) ... so I probably won't be able to create the actual mountain outlines. It was ethereal.

The other thing I kept noticing as I drove was how much like lace the treetops looked. Trunks tend to be white to light gray to dark at the tops, or sometimes dark red ... but very random-lacy. Occasional evergreens are soft and almost fluffy (most of them are pines in this area, with long needles in clumps that read soft from a distance). I think some machine freemotion lace would be a good technique to try for reproducing the winter treescapes. :)

I had to work on the sales floor at my shop on Friday and today. Today was the last 'regular' day for the store - after this, it will be open by appointment only until the final closing at the end of February. Friday was fairly quiet but today was busy, busy - mostly because I sent out an advisory email yesterday to the customer base telling them about our last hours.

In addition to the inventory sales we did today, several people came in to buy fixtures. (Hooray!) So far almost everything is spoken for except the fabric shelves. Do YOU need sturdy attractive shelving for your home/studio? The photo at the top of this page shows  you what they look like. :) I did get a lead on a non-profit that might like the stuff (I just want to be sure they get used). 

My employees (many of them are on the 'former' list) came in toward the late afternoon, to be with me for the last day I think. I got more hugs today (from various customers) than I think I've had over the past six months. I did not grow up in a 'hugging' household and it took me a while as a young adult to get used to being hugged. Now I love it - it is a good 'connected' feeling for me. :)

The one question everyone asks me is 'what will you do now?' One thing I hope to do is to post every day to this blog. Fingers crossed that I can at least manage four or five posts a week. I've been keeping this blog since February of 2006 - this is my 686th post. I think I should work on a nice give away for my 700th (that is far enough ahead that I _might_ actually manage to do something nice:).

:) Linda

Yeah!

I went to my weekly nutrionist appointment earlier today ... and, lo and behold, I lost THREE pounds this past week! You may not think so, but I consider that a major accomplishment. :) My weight has been hovering around 220, plus or minus two pounds, for eight weeks (at least). How wonderful to cross that plateau! Maybe, with a little mindfulness about my consumption, I can get below the 200 mark by spring? (fingers crossed)

I have 'diet traveled' back to the beginning of my store ownershiop period (early 1999). If I can cross the 200 mark, I will have traveled back to my early mothering time (I weighed 200 at the delivery point of my first child). :)

:) Linda (happy to have something positive to celebrate)

Unexpected Pleasures

I have had two very interesting days already this week! Monday (yesterday:) was the regularly scheduled monthly meeting of Mimi Dietrich's Applique Grad Class at my shop. This group has been meeting at Seminole Sampler much longer than I have owned the store (and some of the members attending are originals:).

Since the store will be closing for good next month, Mimi has been working to find another place for the group to meet in the future. Unbeknown to me, the group decided to present me and my staff with a Thank You cake yesterday - and a truly wonderful card. The cake was made by Peggy Wheeler (I _think_) who is a professional chef - and was DELICIOUS. Good enough to eat despite my 'diet'. :)

The card ... when I sat down and read it through (with all the individual members' short signings), it actually made me cry with pleasure. Kinda rare for me as I tend to think things over for a long time and absorb them slowly - at least in part because I dislike losing control over myself so much that I cry (one of the worst parts about being a depression-prone person, for me, is that I cry continuously when I'm unmedicated). I rarely get the kind of 'we appreciate you' feedback that this card gave me in one big shot of emotion. Breathtaking. :)

Today was Inventory Taking at the shop. Hopefully the last inventory adventure I'll ever have to endure. :P Basically, the four of us that are left on the staff had to count everything in the store (that is part of the inventory - don't count shelves and such:). Usually, when the store was running normally, this takes a crew of six to ten people five to eight hours to accomplish. We got it all done in about two and a half hours today (although Daria came in earlier than the rest of us and got a head start:). I ordered pizza for us to eat at lunch, once we finished, and we had a nice chatty sit-down.

For the second year in a row I did not give anyone on staff a Xmas gift ... last year it was due to outright depression (dealing with the reality of my ailing business and its woes), this year because I spent almost all of December in Ohio mourning. My employee/friend Alice M. did give us gifts - each one something different but handmade by her. At the top of this post is a photo of my gift, hanging on the front of my sewing table - a thread catcher in the shape of a frog (browk!). I laughed so hard when I saw it - and occasionally had to add a croak - I hope Alice could tell that I love Miss Froggy. :) Humor is a GOOD thing, better for me now than I have ever appreciated before. :) Just love her big pink mouth and her lily pad pinnie. :)

Outside it is incredibly cold for Maryland - it was 5 degrees (Farenheit) when I pulled in to the parking lot at 10 a.m. BRRR! Inside was warm and happy and I am grateful for that. :) Tomorrow Skip and I will spend some more time at the store doing the computer adjustments for inventory. Then I will stay warm at home and knit for the evening.

I managed to complete eight rows on the scarf I'm making currently tonight - maybe I can do the same tomorrow, too. It is a lace scarf so I have to really pay attention to the chart and keep track of my stitch count. My attention span (roughly the same as a cricket's:) prevents me from doing too many rows at a time.

:) Linda

Looking Back, Moving Forward

 

Somewhere in my travels during December I happened upon this pretty plate on the wall - honestly, I no longer remember where I saw it. Sigh. I thought the pattern might lend itself nicely to an appliqued medallion of some kind. I particularly like the border around the rim. :)

I have had a quiet and very pleasant New Year's holiday this year. My friend Barbara B. and I got together at the store and sewed for two days. Usually we confine our holiday sewing to one day - but we were both 'off' so we stretched it into two days this year.

I was not feeling especially brainy so I decided to keep working on my African hexagon project - very scrappy looking. :) I got a lot of sewing done on it - I only have three half-hex rows to go and it will be complete (queen sized). I look forward to giving it to the Long Arm Princess In Residence for quilting! :)

Barbara worked on several projects and made serious headway on all of them. She assembled and prepared the borders for her dark blue and yellows star sampler quilt ... planned and prepared borders for her three Trip quilts made with animal-skin fabrics ... and planned and made the borders for a really nice looking black/white/pink heart quilt. You can see those projects on her blog, Stash Overflow, when she is ready to share them.

:) Linda

PS It is snowing very prettily today so there is some chance that I won't open the store tomorrow...gotta get up early to make that decision. :) Since I spent today running an assortment of errands for my Probate duties, maybe I'll get to stay home and do some de-cluttering. :P