A whole day to myself

Can you believe it? I will get a whole day to myself this weekend! It is almost a little scary.

I will be attending the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair in Crystal Lake, IL where I will be shopping and taking workshops. I am looking forward to seeing Sue from Pacafil. I met her last year at the fair. She and her sister make batting from alpaca wool. It feels amazing and is supposed to be quite warm. I got a small sample from them the last time I saw them. This year I planned ahead and emailed them asking them to bring some larger samples (that I would gladly pay for) so that I can take it home and test how it quilts up. Can't wait to get the samples and give them a whirl.

I'm also looking forward to the two workshops I will be taking. The morning workshop is on sock knitting. I got my double points and some yarn this weekend at my local yarn shop (love shopping at the local stores - like to keep them in business. Here's a tip - cash is best at these small shops as they pay a hefty fee for credit cards). Of course the yarn I got is alpaca!

The afternoon workshop is on surface design. I think that we will be doing some painting, dying and other such fun things as the class description says to wear grubby clothes that you don't care get ruined.

Oh and I should mention how the quilt bee went two weeks ago. There were a half dozen or so ladies at my house. I set up tables outside and covered them with plastic. Then we wet our fabric and got to painting! We used setacolor soliel paints applied with either a sponge brush or a spray bottle. One of the ladies brought her mother in law who was visiting from out of town and even she got into painting. Too bad that the day was overcast or we could have had real fun with the solar reactive paints. A week later the ladies were still raving about how much fun they had painting their fat quarters.

Wow, sorry about the stream of consciousness dribble that seems to have gone on and on. I'll update next week when I will (hopefully) have my camera working (we are supposed to get a new charger tonight).

Found the Camera!

I found the camera. I even pulled it out. I opened it up. I turned it on. The batteries were dead.

No worries, they are rechargable. I have lots of rechargable batteries in both AA and AAA sizes.

So I popped the batteries into the charger and plugged it in.

No go. Not charging. Flipped the light switch. Nope. Flipped the other switch. Nope. Unplugged and replugged with both switches on. Nope.

Took it to my favorite electricity guru. He tested the charger. No juice. There is a short in the cord. There will be no more battery charging until I can replace the cord.

Bummer.

Someone remind me to pull out my camera

I know where my camera is, I really do. It just seems I forget to use it! So give me a pinch and tell me to get it out and I might have some photos for you one of these days!

That aside, what have I been up to? I have actually been sewing! I love it. I have not been doing well at finding time to sew every day, but I am sewing more than I used to. In the last couple of weeks, I made an attached the binding to a charity quilt. I still have to sew the binding around on the back of the quilt, but it is that much closer to complete.

I also caught up on the hand work on my Tropical Flowers quilt. I think that makes 8 or 9 completed blocks. I have yet to cut out and fuse the rest of the flowers so it will be set aside until I get the time to trace the pattern - won't happen this week.

Why not this week? Oh holy cow, let me tell you!

I am preparing to move this fall to my fiance's house. In doing so, I am getting a new sewing room. So I decided that I really need a good sewing machine table. I went looking for a table but decent ones are $700 to $1100, far outside my budget. While I was searching craigslist I found a 4'x8' countertop someone was selling cheap so I went to go see it. It was perfect! It is huge! And she was selling a whole bunch of office furniture. So I got the countertop, 2 armless task chairs, two 6' metal storage cabinets, a 5 drawer lateral filing cabinet, a metal printer cart, and a 6' bookcase. Oh and the woman gave me about 200 white kraft bags with handles just because she needed to get rid of them! I'll cut a hole in the countertop and fiance will get first dibs on the rest of the stuff for his home office. I don't imagine I would get any of it to fit in my sewing room - the countertop, once on legs, will just about fill the sewing room.

And that's not all! Tonight I have to get ready because tomorrow night the quilt bee will be meeting at my house. I promised to teach them to use setacolor soliel paints to "dye" fabric. I have three large banquet tables that I will cover with plastic and put in the yard. I have several colors of setacolor paints, various brushes, pots and spray bottles. Each quilter is going to bring a fat quarter to paint and hopefully everyone will have a nearly dry piece of fabric to take home with them.

Thursday night begins the weekend here in the US. Independence day is on Saturday and so most employers are closed on Friday, including mine and fiance's. We'll relax on Thursday night, have his brother and brother's fiance over for a cookout on Friday, clean up and reorganize fiance's home office on Saturday and meet with our gaming group on Sunday. Somewhere in there I will have to squeeze in some sewing.

As for today, I have my knitting with me here at work so that I can get a little something done at lunch time. Wish me luck on that!

Back into the swing of things

It has been a very long time since I have blogged. I make no apologies. The blog is for me. I hope it entertains or inspires my readers, but I no longer feel obligated to make regular entries.

That being said, I hope that you will soon notice that my entries will become more regular.

I have recently had a birthday. For my birthday I got an iPod. I immediately subscribed to every free quilting podcast available. So all week this week I have been listening to podcasts while I worked.

I have become a big fan of a particular podcast by Brye Lynn called "Sew, Stitch, Create!" Yesterday Brye Lynn dared me... yes, she DARED me, no, she dared ME to make sewing a necessity - to make it such a priority that I made sure I touched my creativity every day. And so I re-embark on my adventure.

Last night I touched my tropical flowers blocks. I only sewed a few inches, but I touched it. It made me happy and I felt I had accomplished something. I also read a book. I'll save the title of the book for a later post when I will also review the book but rest assured it was a quilting book.

So here's a great big shout out and kudos to Brye Lynn for setting me on the path to creativity again. Now, can someone give me a map so I don't get lost again?

She's a pretty kitty

This is the scene that I come home to every day. Yesterday I caught it on camera. I swear this cat is part dog.

This past weekend was a bit of a bust as far as crafting went. I was not feeling well and had little energy. I did get a few rows done on my second knitted dishcloth and I have almost all of my green scraps trimmed to standard sizes. I wanted to start (and finish) a casual jacket for my mother but completely forgot to get it started. I have the fabric and the pattern, I just need to cut it out and whip it together. No buttons or zippers required for this pattern but it will be my first time making something out of slinky. I hope it is forgiving.

What did happen this weekend is that I got a new front door storm door that actually closes and seals so well that it is noticeably warmer in the house now that it has been installed. In fact, we can leave the steel door wide open and there is no draft! The nicest part of the new door is that the screen rolls up into the door when the window part is up and pulling down the storm window reveals the screen. No way kitty is going to get her claws into it and as long as we keep the screen put away when we aren't using it, it is less likely to get damaged. Bonus - there is no glass to be removed in the summer when we want to install the screen, the glass just slides down and out of the way.

Dishcloth done!

Here it is finished! It is a little small. I have started a second dishcloth with larger needles (size 9) and I am going to use more stitches (60 on the diagonal). This should increase the size of the dishcloth by about 35% on each side. Why the boring natural color? So that I can bleach the heck out of it after I abuse it in my kitchen.