Fiber and Pulp

Rainbows and Weather

As I drove to my shop (what's left of it) day before yesterday, there was a gorgeous rainbow in the sky. Behind the arch are dark clouds with rain. This particular rainbow went all the way across the sky - a full arch. I haven't seen a rainbow for a number of years - and I cannot even remember having seen a complete one before. :) I managed to pull over to the shoulder and take a couple of quick photos, but I could not get the whole thing in my camera. Beautiful daily miracle. :)

I am still struggling with establishing any kind of routine in  my daily life. Some days I cannot sleep and wake up at the crack of dawn, others I can't wake up until afternoon. Sigh! We've had a very gray winter, over all, here in Maryland and I think it is effecting me more than usual. :P Also, according to the home sleep test I took last week, I need a new CPAP machine for my sleep apnea. No telling, yet, what that will cost. :(

We managed to find a really nice couple who are planning to open a new shop that would like to have the beautiful fabric shelves - YEAH! The new shop will be garment as well as quilt making; they are planning to sell Janome machines, Horn cabinets and as much fabric as they can afford. I sure wish them well - the shop will be called Glory Bee's Sewing Center and they already have a space rented just north of Baltimore (I will share more info when I find out:).

I am working on sewing up a tote bag for the exchange at the Modern Quilt Retreat in Lancaster, PA next month....and still knitting at home.

Tonight I managed to insert a lifeline into my triangle shawl project so I could rip out the last twelve rows I had  done - I forgot to make the two increases in each wrong side row that the pattern called for. :P I thought about un-knitting it (um, reverse knitting, which I do when it is only a few stitches wrong), but doing that for twelve rows was just too mind boggling. :) So, I sewed a bright pink yarn through the stitches twelve rows back and then unraveled everything to that point. I went wrong in some places (hard to tell which row was which with the lacy design) but it wasn't too hard to fix my mistakes. Truthfully, I was astonished that it worked - well, I _think_ it worked. I'll find out in ten or twelve more rows when I can look at the pattern. :)

As much as I love the way a lacy pattern looks, I don't think I'll be knitting much in the way of lace. I am going to try to limit myself to edgings and borders for a while - following charts is hard for me to do right now as my attention span is shorter than a toddlers. :P I am soooo distractable, it's hard for me to keep track of what I am knitting. sigh.

My clamshell pieces have been staring at me from the gray design board for days and I can't get myself to start sewing them together. I am going to take that as a sign that my backbrain doesn't like something about the way I've laid it out and pack up the project for a while. I've been asked to develop a class with the Hex 'n More ruler, so I think I will concentrate of making a sample and lesson plan instead. 

Really what I _should_ be doing is hauling stuff home and getting rid of more things at the shop. I need to start by cleaning out one of our bedrooms to be a combined office and sewing room ... yeah, soon as I can get my body to move when my brain says 'Go!' More Sighes!

:) Linda

PS Today is my beloved daughter's 33rd birthday...and I forgot to even call her. My karma is mostly black right now. :(

Que Passe?

We have had plenty of this going on here in Maryland this winter (less than in some more northerly areas of the US, more than in the southern hemisphere:). This big blue spruce tree in situated in my back door neighbor's yard - it's what I see when I look out my bedroom windows. The snow always looks lovely coming down around this tree. :) The bit we got on Sunday was very dry and fluffy but stuck to the tree branches nicely as there was minimal wind:

I know this because I was in bed trying to stay warm most of the afternoon and evening. :P I came down with the nasty respiratory virus my son and husband have been battling with and spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday in bed. I knew I was sick because I had no desire to do much else - had to talk myself into getting up for bathroom and eating breaks. :)

Today I felt much better (Yeah!:) though I'm not well, yet. This is the point in most illnesses where I have to be careful. I'm not a patient sickie usually and I tend to jump up and start doing things before I am really well - and then, predictably, relapse. :P

I woke up spontaneously around 6:30 a.m. this morning - a very rare event! :) After a few minutes it was clear to me that I was not going back to sleep ... so I laid in bed and watched a movie from Netflix on my iPad until 8. That was late enough that I could justify getting up, showering and moving along with the day. :)

I had to go to the store today - it was Mimi Dietrich's last class session (the reason we have been open for this long) for her year long Baltimore applique series. Very bittersweet for me was saying final good byes to the students and Mimi.

Apparently our security system has been sending 'help me' signals to the alarm company as two of their technicians came in a few minutes after the last students left to repair one of the sensor notifications (one of the panic buttons needed a new battery). I have to call the security company and see what is involved in having the system removed.

I walked up to Peace-a-Pizza for my favorite salad lunch around 2 p.m. Was much colder out than I expected and it felt as though the temperature was falling. :P Felt really good to go back inside into the warmth. :) Once I got back to the store, I decided that it was way too  cold to carry recycling out to my car (to take to the landfill/recycling center)...so I sewed all afternoon.

Recently I bought a new die for my cutter - a Go version 8" clamshell. Yes, I know that is a huge clamshell - I wanted a big one because my intention was to use my ample scrap collection of large scale Japanese prints. I searched my office and could NOT find those fabrics (I have a couple grocery bag sized bunches of them) - I must have taken them home.

In the process of searching, I found a 35 piece fat eighth collection of prints from Moda's Oh, Deer! line by Franson. I love the colors (so bright and happy!) so I went to town with that instead:

The two pieces of fabric at the top of this photo are the two prints I found that might make borders with these pretties. :) These colors just made me feel good all afternoon! It turns out that a fat eighth (9"x22") is big enough to cut two 8" clamshells with. So, I pressed and ran the 35 prints through my Accucut Studio (with the Go adapter in place). So fast, so accurate! Really can't get much easier to prepare patches. :)

Then I got to play with the colors ... oh glorious, oh frabjous day! :) That is the real fun, for me, in quilting - the color, the print textures, the excitement. :) Here is about half my clamshells laid out on the gray flannel work wall in one arrangment (kind of a 'strippie' style):

The lighting in the classroom space makes those yellows look much more agressive than they were to my eye - I thought it was more of a buttermilk-y yellow. :) As you can see, I cut partial clamshells to square out the arrangement. I still have the same number of print shells that I can add to this (with rearrangment) or I might end up making two tops?

I am thinking about whether to make this two smaller quilts (with one going to the BMQG bingo and the other to my niece) or one larger quilt with a less certain final use. :)

OH, I almost forgot one of the day's best bits - Daria brought in my African Hexagon quilt FINISHED (well, QUILTED - I still need to finish the outer edges). I love the way it looks (but forgot to take a photo). Will save that photo for another day. I really want to get it finished so I can put it on our bed - darn cold in our house this winter, despite the super efficient heat pump (not such great appliances in weather this cold).

 

:) Linda

 

PS I managed to get to my other guild's weekly meeting tonight - Faithful Circle. Because the church where we usually meet was doing their regularly scheduled hosting of homeless folks from the nasty cold weather, we met the Normandy Sew & Vac in Ellicott City.

I had not been there since the shop expanded their space and added fabric to the mix of sewing machines and vacuum cleaners they have sold for years. The space looks really good and was full of fun samples and bright inventory. Very inviting. :) The class/meeting room space was comfortable though smaller (of course) than the space at our usual church hall. I sat during the meeting and cut the scraps left from die cutting the clamshells into pieces for English Paper Piecing the Tea Leaf design. Just can't get enough of that pretty fabric. :)

 

 

 

More African Adventures

Today was interesting in more than one way. The tickle I felt in my throat last night had turned into a real chest cold by the time I woke up this morning. :P I sound like a frog at best. LOL! I stayed in bed about an hour after I woke up (around 9:45 a.m.) to keep warm.

My first duty today was to go for my weekly weigh-in. I really wasn't expecting much (have become leery of expecting any loss, as stubborn as my body has been for the past three months)...so I was pleased that I lost 1 pound this past week. Excrutiatingly slooooooow, but hopefully more sure. :P They were handing out a 'Valentine's Day' recipe for chocolate pudding in a brownie (there are Medifast 'meals' for both pudding and brownie). I might actually try that one - for the most part I do very little actual cooking and mostly stick to the bar type meal replacements. Now that I am at home more, I've been branching out a bit and eating more things that need preparation (my favorites so far are their oatmeals for breakfast and hot cocoa at night:).

After I finished with the nutritionist, I drove to Catonsville. Before I went to my shop I stopped and had a delicious salad for lunch at Peace A Pizza, just up from the store. Love their salads! :) I've eaten several of them but my favorite is the Sante Fe - I've eaten at least thirty of them over the past year or so and I still love each and every bite. :)

My shop is looking pretty sad. I have some folks coming tomorrow to look the unclaimed fixtures over and take the suitable ones away for resale. I have my fingers crossed that they will take many if not most of the remainders! It took me a while to settle down but I finally managed to get back to sewing. I guess I'm not finished with the African fabric set as I dug that out and started making a wall hanging/baby quilt top - still using the Hex n' More ruler. This time I went for framed hexagons.

You can see the finished top in the photo at the top of this post. Piecing the big framed hexes and the two half-hexes with frames was easy-peasy. When I got to trying to figure out how to do the edge triangles (along the sides  in the photo), my brain just would _not_ wrap around the math, so I had to work the problem out another way. Here is what I did:

I already had these half hex pieces cut out (left over from the big quilt I took to be longarmed), so I added them to each side. Then I marked off where I wanted the edges of the top to be with a yellow chalk pencil. I sewed along inside those marks on each side (lots of stretchy bias edges I wanted to stabilize) and cut off the extra fabric outside the marks with scissors. I guess I'm really showing the 'after' shot before the 'before' shot, eh? :)

Here are two close up pictures with somewhat better focus of the two sides:

Do you see the blue/white fish square with the black frame at the top of this section? That is where this whole adventure started - in the box of African fabrics I got, this fish piece of fabric was just a scrap ... that I liked a lot. :) I made the rest of the blue/white hex shape with other like color fabrics (like Virginia's 15 minutes of play:). 

Here is the right side of the quilt top. See the hex made up of smaller hexagons? When I was cutting up the yardage, I cut small hexes (they are 2" along a side) from little scraps as I just could not bear to waste any of the African prints. :) Making that small hexagon was oodles of work compared to the big ones.

My friend Barbara came in to the shop to sew with me this evening which was fun. Today was her birthday and I appreciated her spending some of it with me. :)

:) Linda

 

Ice Coats for All

This is how the trees in my front yard looked this morning when I went outside around 10 a.m. You might have to click and look at a large version of the photo to see the beautiful coat of ice on each and every branch and twig. The temperature (according to my car's thermometer) was 33 degrees - so the streets were wet but not icy. The sidewalks and ground were a different matter! One shortcoming of using a cane is that it is not much help when the surfaces you can use it on are all slippery. :P

I had a routine doctor's appointment this morning so I drove about two miles to his office...the streets were fine and very quiet (this _is_ Maryland - people stay home in droves when the weather is bad). We have not had this kind of ice storm in quite a few years so I guess we are all out of practice with driving in it. Luckily I already know the secret for driving in sloppy freezing weather - go slow and maintain friction with your tires! :)

I had thought I would go to my shop to work this afternoon. When I got out of the doctor's office, though, it was still only 33 out ... so I decided to be sensible and just go home. Also, I had a tickle in the back of my throat - sure sign that my husband's cold is trying to grab onto me. :P I've spent most of today attempting to stay quiet and warm. Sigh.

Since I got more of the Coffee Beanz yarn to finish the secret project I'm knitting on, I sat under a quilt and worked on crocheting the rest of it while watching back episodes of Leverage. I really enjoy that show. :)

This is what the small maple tree to the left of my driveway looked like just beyond my car's door this morning. The ice was weighing the branches down so much the poor tree was bent almost to the ground.

:) Linda

Compound Frustration

I feel really frustrated right now. sigh. I took a bunch of different photos over the past three days that I now cannot find. grr. No, they aren't in my camera or my email queue or my email trash or the iPhoto image massaging software. Heaven alone knows what happened to them. Mostly they were pics of my shopping adventures and of the weather/landscapes around my home. Nothing of vast importance, thankfully. :P

The beginning of this past week was too quiet and the last two days were kinda hectic. One thing about my life, it rarely floats at a happy medium for activity. Rueful smiles.

Thursday I had planned to go to the weekly daytime meeting of my quilt guild ... but slept right through it. I woke up with barely enough time to get dressed and get to my weigh-in appointment. Lost 1 pound - great news. :) Slowly, slowly, the glacial movement of my weight is tending downward again after an extended balance with no change. I am feeling encouraged to go on with this adventure. (whew!) After my appointment, I went to the newest quilt shop around - less than two miles from my house here on the south side of Columbia! - to buy a batt for my African hex quilt. Decided to invest in a wool batt 'cause I want this to be a utility quilt with lots of life in it. :) 

Springwater Designs quilt shop is a cute little place, run by Dawn Stewart whom I know from the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild. In addition to the batt, I bought a really cute (imho:) panel with steampunk-esque sewing-themed block designs. I'm thinking it would make a good lap quilt or wall hanging for my quilting room. :) Or gift, maybe, for someone special. :) Dawn is now arranging for classes - for the first time, it occurred to me that I _could_ go back to teaching. I have to ponder exactly what I'd like to teach ... have many skills, need focus. Grin.

Friday I took my African Hex quilt to Daria to be long-armed. I love the way her new home studio looks! The room with her long-arm in it is painted white and full of sunlight. She was getting ready to put a really pretty top on the frame to quilt that had roses and nine patch blocks on it (combinations of great designs:). It was fun to see her, too. Daria is so funny. :)

I spent most of Friday afternoon going through all my computer files and real paper files, gathering up the minutes from past years of Quilter's Quest doings. I had completely forgotten that I was chairperson at least one year in the early 2000's. :) I think I blocked it off to protect myself. LOL. I loaded up the files and several other pieces of ephemera that I needed to give to the committee into my car at the end of evening.

Saturday was a wonderful day. My neighbor and friend, Patty S. and I went down to LaPlata MD to visit Material Girls quilt shop (ostensibly so I could hand over all the committee stuff to Amy Henley, the owner:). So much bright color and lovely inspiration. I really, really enjoy visiting that shop (probably a good thing for my bank account that it is about 2.5 hours away from home:).

I was kinda careful and bought gently - some dark gray Kona solid (to use on my Riley Blake challenge piece), some binding clips, the new book Candy Store (full of 30's inspired quilt patterns), a new pair of inexpensive stork scissors. Patty and I ate at a deli right around the corner of the building from MG, Apple Spice.  The food was GREAT. I am definitely eating there again. :) We also stopped at Crazy For Ewe, a knitting shop a few blocks behind MG> I gave in and bought two skeins of yarn to make a cowl (I think I might give it to my daughter so I won't share here:). She had three samples in the store that I liked but only reference/pattern for one of them. sigh.

We decided to detour eastward a little bit on the way home and visit Cottonseed Glory (in the hope that Robbyn would be working and SHE WAS:). The shop was full of customers (Super Bowl weekend sales:) and busy, busy. I was _astonished_ to find that Robbyn was wearing a staff apron (she always refused to be identified for the public in my shop:). The fabric, as always, was equally beautiful in CG - lots of wonderful bright batiks, a really good line up of Kaffe prints, etc. Crammed full of people. I found a lovely bird block repeat print and had to buy some - I think I will make something for the BMQG bingo with it. :)

We tried to stop at the Parole JoAnns on the way into Annapolis to see if they had Tunisian Crochet hooks (no). Small, messy shop. Not the best JoAnns I've ever visited. :P

As long as we were at Cottonseed, I walked two doors up and visited the Art Things supply store. Other than the artist supply store near the Maryland Art Institute in Baltimore, it is the only 'real' artist's store I know of in this area. The big box stores are wiping out that niche, too. :P I wanted to buy some Prismacolor artist grade colored pencils and some matte finish acrylic paint in flesh tones to work with the video by Jane Davenport that I purchased recently on drawing 'whimsical' faces. I really enjoyed the author's instructions and she made the whole thing seem much easier than I have ever found it to be before. :) Even the art supply shop was busy!

The weather was 'warm' (in the 50's) on Saturday ... and the forecasters are saying we'll get more snow and cold come Monday, so lots of people (all of whom were probably more-or-less stir crazy) were out shopping. Traffic was surprisingly heavy everywhere we went. :)

By the time I finished at the art shop, I was bushed ... so Patty and I just drove home. I spent the rest of the evening with my feet up, looking at my purchases. :)

I _thought_ we'd go to the store to work today, but poor Skip has a shocking bad cold (he can barely breathe) and I have no ambition. :) I think we will likely vegitate tomorrow, too, if the forecasts come true.

:) Linda

PS I almost forgot ... the photo at the top of this post shows what I am knitting right now. I have a skein of beautiful purple-to-red varigated fingering weight yarn (that was very expensive) that I am knitting this small sweater with - crossing my fingers that I don't get bored before I finish it. :)