Work in Progress - Corner to Corner Afghan

One of the least expensive yarns to buy is Red Heart's Supersaver.   I strongly suspect that it sells very well because they have been making it for a long time.  There are those knitters and crocheters who consider it a "junk" yarn, right? 

I know there are many more lovely and soft and probably easier to work with yarns out there in the marketplace -- but somehow, Red Heart's Supersaver creeps into my stash.  Mostly it finds it's way into my box of yarn because I find it in the thrift shops for even cheaper than it is in the retail stores!  How about $2 for 3 almost full skeins?

Now, as with quilts that I make through the year and donate to my quilt guilds charitable projects, I like to make up a few crocheted throws that I donate in the late fall to our city's Christmas Bureau.

I have a "go to" pattern for the afghan that I usually make for this.

It is from Red Heart's selection of free patterns.  Go to Corner to Corner Throw to get the instructions for this pattern.  I have been making this particular pattern for at least 10 years now!  I first found it via my Mother-in-Laws suggestion (she was not computer literate but had a print out and one in progress when I first saw it).

I love the way you can make this afghan look very formal with the angled strips being alternated in planned colours (see the pattern's photo on the Red Heart site, or as I make it, I pull out a ball of supersaver and start at the corner and crochet until that colour runs out, then I pull out the next colour and go for as long as that next skein lasts.  I am always pleased with these afghans!  Always bright and cheery.  Once you get started it just seems to grow itself...  This afghan doesn't have to be made in the size described in the pattern, you can make it baby size or lap size of king size if you like.  When you have figured out the increase and decrease method you become master of this project!

So this throw is destined for the Christmas Bureau, come November  hopefully I will manage to get a couple more done to donate.

I have a second Work In Progress, that is being added right here to my blog.   Look up.  Look Way Up.  See the tabs at the top of the page?  Well, I have a collection.  It is a collection that I started in 2009 and just recently decided that instead of hiding it in computer files, I would add it right here on my blog.

If you will click on the tab up there that says My Collection of Big Things you will find some of the photos I have taken of Roadside Attractions in various cities and towns between Duncan, BC and Winnipeg, MB.  These all are photos that I have taken myself, tho there are many many more BIG THINGS across Canada...  If you read back to The Worlds Largest Raspberry Plant a few days ago you can read about my most recent addition to my collection.  If you regularly visit my blog, for the next while I will be adding photos of the BIG THINGS.

I am linking up with the Needle and Thread Network today.  Remember to check out a few of the other Canadian blogs  linked up there too!

The World's Largest Raspberry Plant

A few years back my lovely husband and I took the opportunity of time off (he lost his job) and a bit of a financial windfall (enough for some fun but not enough for a lifetime) to go for a drive through the western 4 provinces of Canada.   Made total sense.  I mean, we live here in BC and we started out both being born in Manitoba.  Time to check out some of the stuff in between that was off the main highways...

Now being just a bit odd, and since there was no real purpose to the trip but to go for a drive in the country we developed a REASON for the drive.   Too many people asked us why we were going for a drive for a month...  So we decided to make the purpose of the trip to discover as many BIG THINGS in the cities and towns along the way.

We did not find them all, not even close.  We did take a few detours to small towns to find the ones that we could...  We stopped to see the Worlds Largest Easter Egg in Vegreville, Alberta (here is the link of the photo and its newspaper write up http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/easter-egg.html )  and we went to Leader, Saskatchewan to see that towns SLEW of big things http://www.leader.ca/sculptures.html

Those were only two of the many, many stops we made and the photos we took of the BIG THINGS that represent their towns and cities. 

Well, finally, right here at home I took a picture of our own City's BIG THING --  the worlds biggest Raspberry Plant.  There was a write up back in July 2011 in our own newspaper and you can read that at  http://www.abbynews.com/news/125012219.html

There are a couple of other BIG THINGS locally that I have driven or walked by right here in town, but  just have not had the camera with me when I  was  in the  vicinity.  There is a big salmon sculpture over near Fish Trap Creek Park -- not so big, but certainly bigger than a real life salmon.  And then there are the Sikh horsemen at the Temple on South Fraser Way... 

I have an album of some of the BIG THINGS that I got photos of when we went for our month long drive in a Pinterest album which you can go check out at this link.  http://pinterest.com/susanbgsnippy/big-things-in-canada/

Next time you go for a drive in the country - any country - keep your eyes open for a few BIG THINGS...  Yes, they are an odd thing to collect, eh?  Oh and there is a website where many of the BIG THINGS are documented and listed so you too can go in person and see a BIG THING in Canada!  go to http://www.bigthings.ca/  or http://www.roadsideattractions.ca/alphabet.htm and make your own list of BIG THINGS to go and visit...

Yard Sale Saturday!

Its been awhile since I was out in the neighbourhoods looking for yard sale deals... Not that I really need more stuff, but well yeah, I need more stuff...

I really only spent my money at one church yard sale and got a few things that will definately come in handy...

Wooden Alphabet Blocks -- I don't know why, I have no young people around me -- so these are either destined for something crafty that I have not thought of YET, or perhaps into the Etsy Store...

Lovely, Lovely, Lovely!  Again, I am not sure what these are for, but I do have in mind using them to embellish a zipper pouch or bag.  A lovely patient teen, I am told put in the time to make these up in a variety of sizes and colours and I am so thankful for that effort.  I love fabric Yo-Yo's!  Don't you?

And some interesting bits of fabric, that I am not sure what use they will be put too, but cute and bright and sure to be used for a interesting project...

And the best buy of the day!  And the best work saving project.  I was thinking that I need a bench or two to set my container garden plants on this summer and the church yard sale had this bench and a mate to it.  This is not how or even actually where the bench will be in my 'scheme of things' for my yard but these benches were only 2 bucks and they saved me a whole bunch of work!  I was thinking of finding some used pallets and re using them after taking them apart to make rough benches, and that would have taken hours and hours.  These pretty little benches are just about right and already painted a gorgeous yellow...  Hours of work SAVED!

Yard sales are so addictive, but at least they are not too, too expensive!  I did see a used Coach purse and was tempted and thought about it a bit too long because when I turned back to pick it up another lady was already paying for it... I guess I will just have to wait longer to be an owner of a COACH bag...

Study of Self -- Work in Progress

I don't know anything that is more of a Work in Progress than our own selves!

Recently the subject of abstract art came up in a conversation with some of my quilting friends.  Do you understand Abstract Art? 

I said "No, in most cases I have no idea what I am looking at."

Now when I am challenged to learn more about something, especially when it has something to do with quilts and quilting I am motivated to do a bit of research to "expand my horizons"!

Here is a article that might help to enlighten you, as it did me, on the subject of Abstract Art -- Art 101: Understanding Abstract Art  (just click on the underlined title to open a new window to read the article)

A 1960's "abstract" tessellations made with scrappy squares, or in those days "just a quilt for the bed"... (sorry the photo is not so great but it is a scan of a slide taken about 1967)

As a quiltmaker, most of my creativity is based on traditional quilting patterns and designs.  One of the earliest quilts I remember was made up of hexagons, pieced but not arranged in specific pattern combinations, it was made of fabrics cut and sewn from shirts, skirts, dresses, and apron scraps.  

the above quilt, a more modern form of the squares that are shown in the first photo This is one of my own quilt creations and one of my favourites -- colourwise -- to me I can see a landscape with all the colour that one might find with flowering shrubs and a  sun setting  sky, Iwould say  this is abstract art, even though when I made it I was not purposely creating abstract art.  It hangs in my bedroom...

A Hexagon quilt or a quilt made up of squares or rectangles, I think, is a good starting point to seeing abstract art.  First, as I learned recently, a hexagon and a square and a rectangle and also an equalateral triangle are all tessellations, which basically means a shape that is two dimensional that covers an area with no gaps or spaces.

 So you see how a hexagon when pieced with many other hexagon creates a tessellation?  Next when you add colour to those shapes, you open up a world of ideas -- forming groups of hexagons into representational shapes, flowers, diamonds, and waves of colours radiating out from the centre.   Random hexagons could be a form of abstract art, but IS the thoughtful placement of colour and even dividing the hexagon into smaller shapes to create diamonds and triangles to form a hexagon make it into a different form of art?  Hmmm, there's a question for someone who studies that sort of thing...

and this one, not abstract, just weird...  acrylic paint on unbleached cotton...

edited in to explain this quilt --  this is a quilt I created in 1998 that was inspired by images from a book called Strange Stains and Mysterious Smells by Terry Jones and Brian Froud pub 1996.  each image was hand drawn with acrylics onto cotton fabric and they are hand copies of images in the book.
Anyway, back to the idea of abstract art...  From what I understand, Abstract Art is whatever you want to see in it.  Now, art such as that done by Picasso, I am able to absorb and somewhat appreciate when I take the time to look at all the facets of it, but a piece such as Jackson Pollock produced, I thought was still somewhat beyond me until I carefully read the article that I suggested you read.  So then when I really make an effort to study it I can see the way the colours and splatter can resemble a randomly pieced patchwork quilt.  I begin to relate.  With no formal art training, I jumble through and try to understand...

So, now thinking of myself as a quilt ARTIST, I am able to start to understand that even making a traditional quilt block makes many of my quilts fall into the abstract category, I think, maybe...

So onto more discovery of my own self and what I like to do...  I ultimately enjoy being a Work in Progress!  How about you?  Do you want to discover how your idea of your craft and art has formed and is developing within you?

Dyeing Buttons - Wednesday WIP

When I get an idea in my head, I rarely let it go.  My Dad once told me that a Bull Dog, latches onto what it is after and just hangs on.  I guess in a way I am a bit of Bull Dog, but I try not to attack LIVE things, just ideas!

A while back I was gifted a big batch of buttons, at least half of them were various white ones.  My plan was to sell the buttons, in my ETSY shop, once they were sorted and picked over, but a couple of thousand white buttons would just get tedious after a bit.

Then I saw an article about dyeing buttons!  Ah Ha! says I.  I will dye some of those white buttons and then I can sell them in a variety of colours!

Well, success and failure.

I bought a couple of boxes of Rit Dye.  I wanted to get Yellow, but the store didn't have any in stock, so red and blue it is...

So I went to the 2nd hand store and bought  a small pot for $2.50.  It is quite an excellent pot for that price, too.  I didn't want to use my regular food cooking pots -- you just never know for sure how non-food things could affect you.  A 2nd hand pot, it is...

First I tried out the red dye.   BEAUTIFUL!  Oh and did you know that glass, shell or ceramic buttons don't absorb dye?  Only plastic or nylon; but that's okay cause glass buttons are apparently a bit more rare now-a-days and therefore one can ask a higher price for them... Good, hey?

WOW! beautiful bright cranberry red!  So even and shiny!  And once the buttons were in the pot, I let the pot simmer and stirred them up a few times for about 10 minutes...

Next I tried the blue.  I must admit I didn't pick through the buttons before I put them into the next dye batch in the pot.

I at first thought that there must be alot of glass, shell or ceramic buttons in that bunch, but I did a second batch and the blue dye just doesn't absorb into the plastic buttons nearly as well as the red.

I even did a batch where I put about a tablespoon of the blue powder dye into the pot and about 1/2 teaspoon of the red, hoping to get purple.  It doesn't work that way with dye of this type, I guess.  I don't know why.  Some of the buttons did go a really dark burgundy but most went that bright cranberry red, even the ones that in the first blue batch stayed white, picked up the cranberry red.   So I have many fewer blue buttons than red...

Well, there are still some buttons left and I do want to try to get some green buttons and some yellow, but I think I will just buy dye in green and yellow, rather than trying to mix colours...  It is a bit too iffy to try to mix dye powder to get a pleasing colour. I'll go with the box... 

That is my kitchen experimenting for awhile, as I probably have 4 or 5 hundred red buttons to sort and package and list in the ETSY shop and a couple hundred blue ones...

That should keep me busy for the next couple of days -- its raining today so what better job than to sit and sort buttons???

Flea Market Sunday

It's been quite a few weeks since I have been able to go to our local Flea Market here in Abbotsford.

Last weekend of course was Easter, and before that for close to a month of Sundays my hubby has been at work and that means I have no driver or bag and bundle carrier!

(that's the husband in the red vest, he is always in a rush!)

I was on the hunt for things to go in my little garden, but this table had high prices and garden ornaments were somewhat faded and getting old...

I did find this fellow and decided he needed to come home with me.

The parking lot was jam-packed and people and cars coming and going...

And I bought a Rosemary plant for my garden and as soon as I brought it in and set it on a table, Walter was sniffing and then biting off leaves...  So, no sitting around, I am going to get it outside and planted in a moment...

Kitchen Duty

When I was young and still lived with my Mother and Father and siblings, spring not only meant spring cleaning but also some new things around the house or yard.

Very often those new things were made by Mom or Dad, depending on what it was. 

Tradition is a difficult thing to shake, even if you are not purposely trying to continue a tradition!

I started to make new kitchen curtains a few days ago.  They actually have a sewing theme because those were the largest simple embroidery patterns I had!  The white is just plain bleached muslin with the added red band and hemmed on the sides and top with a slip through for the rod.  I am planning to make some crochet red flowers to string across the top part of the window, they are in progress and will be a few days til they are done.

I was also moved to make a new plastic bag holder, simple but serves the purpose just inside the closet door.  I threw out the previous one that I had been using since about 1994!  It was incredibly grubby and worn...  The fabric for the new one tho is from a thrifted vintage sheet, that is much older than 1994, more like 1974...  I am partial to daisies and this bit of fabric suits me fine.

The bag holder is simple to do.  It is a fat quarter or there abouts (18 inches x 20 inches) sewn up the long side, then fold over pocket seams at each end,  the top one is threaded with a piece of plastic strapping (my husband gets his newspaper bundles held together with this stuff so it is real handy for me to use).  The strapping helps to hold open the top to make it easy to plop in the plastic bags that come home (when we forget our reuseable bags).

  The other end is threaded with a length of elastic pulled fairly tight, but enough so you can grab and pull through a bag from the bottom.  And a piece of red ribbon to hang the holder from a big tack...

Both these projects took a total of less than 3 hours!  Alot less time than yesterday's spring project which was taking all the stuff out of my kitchen cupboards, washing the inside of the cupboards and then putting all the things back in neatly and in some sort of order. 

So, now my kitchen has got its annual spruce up and I can nag my hubby to sand down the patches on the walls in the dining room and think about what paint and colour I am wanting...

They tell me it is Friday the 13th...  So far today everything has gone quite nicely and smoothly so I didn't notice.  Hope your Friday the 13th is free of the undesireable possibilites that this day is known for!

Good - Work in Progress

THE GOOD
Quilters are generous people...  Well, so are alot of just regular people, but I mostly know crafty people in my life and even those with little cash to spare, generously give their time and talent to make quilts for a wide variety of causes.

Now, I have been quilting as a HOBBY since about 1985, but actually made a few quilts before that but I considered it part of being a homemaker.   When my children were very young I started to make quilts for their beds, quilts to haul around to picnics or to the beach, quilts to play on when they were out in the yard, quilts to use as tents and even a quilt or two to use as a table cover at christmas.  Those kind of quilts were made throughout the 1970's. (only 2 small ones still exist today)

When I first joined a quilt guild in 1986, I began to consider it a hobby and I soon discovered quilt shows and quilt challenges at quilt shows.  My very favourite part of any quilt show has always been the guilds' challenges -- I have participated in ALOT of them.

A couple of weeks ago, I was digging through my storage trunk and realized that all those challenge quilts I had made over the years, were sitting idle at the bottom of the trunk.

As I looked through them I knew that their main use was to be looked at but they certainly didn't get looked at in the bottom of a big box, now did they?   The quilts were generally square and usually about 30 inches or less on each side.   So, I thought about it for awhile.  Who could enjoy these quilts and make use of them?  Where could I 'get rid' of them but yet not personally feel that my hard work and creativity was wasted.   Yes, where could I put those quilts and give myself SATISFACTION of a good job done and be happy to know that my work was also USEFUL...

Because these quilts were as much as 20 years old, their colours were not current or modern, but they were generally pretty, and warm, and definately useful.

So, I picked out 6 of these 'challenge' quilts (yes I still have a few more that I am thinking of homes for) and because my cousin Judi works as an aide at a private care home for 'Challenged' ladies I thought "How appropriate that they have something bright and cheery but not too big."   So I sent six of my Challenge Quilts over to the 6 ladies in that care facility.

The Work in Progress

And, since it is Work in Progress over at the Needle and Thread Network  I want to tell you about my newest obsession...

Yesterday, yep, just yesterday, I took a class from our quilt guild's MATH WIZARD Jane.   TESSELLATIONS... This idea has been around for awhile, but not like centuries, just a dozen decades maybe.  Anyway, I am hooked.  For Now.  Jane taught us about the different types of tessellations and how they worked and how to create them.   I really like best that every one is unique.  There are definate tessellations that have become recognized in the art world and most people recognize the name ESCHER.  Well, I am no Escher, but now I can say I am a someone original artist.  My shapes may be somewhat like others that have gone before, but apparently what I cut out is quite unlikely to be exactly like what someone else has done...  EVEN if I emulate similar cuts, mine is still likely to be my own....

The one above (can you see the halloween ghost?) was a shape that I made after the class when I got home.  It started out as an equilateral triangle and once the shape was created one point revolved to make the design...  I am going to use this as my first tessellation in fabric !  I am hoping to show you an "in progress" or finished piece next week.

In class we used playing cards cut to regular shapes (square, hexagon, triangle) to learn the basics of cut out and put back.  Simple to more complicated.

One thing that always puzzles me about the MATH in Quiltmaking is why is Math so facinating now, and when I was 14 and in grade 9, I was on the verge of failing each year of high school math that I took?  Why wasn't math at all interesting then?  How is it that my mind changed so drastically and now enjoys something I so despised before???

Now, that we here in the Pacific Northwest are finally getting sunshine and summer temperatures, I am planning to set up my outside table and draw tessellations for every hour I can find to sit in my back yard!

Hope you are out there getting a bit of that shine and enjoying everything you do!

Tiny Pom Pom Tutorial

A few days ago, the group of quilters that we call a satellite group - there are only 5 of us - got together to do what we do...  Talk about quilting and other crafty ideas that we share with each other.

Somewhere in between talking about quilts and showing off our latest projects the subject of pom-poms came up.   How do you make pom-poms?  

Ellen says she cuts out a circle and winds the yarn in and out of the centre 'donut'.  Always a successful method but can be quite tedious if you are needing to make alot of those fuzzy little balls.  

Louise or maybe it was Doris said she justs winds the yarn around a piece of cardboard, with a string held between the wound around yarn and the cardboard then pulls the string and ties it off.  One of the problems with this method is that the pom-pom doesn't always seem quite as full and puffy as one would like.

I generally use the straight piece of cardboard.

Then I was thinking, is there a way to use something that is sturdy and won't scrunch up (as cardboard often does) and yet has a slit in it so that the tie up string can be easily held in place...

I'm sure this has been thought of before, because well, we all know there is nothing new under the sun, just a slight variation of an older idea...

So.

My slight variation is,  A FORK!

Now, this does make a small - in fact rather tiny pom-pom.

Just insert a length of yarn or string, that will be your tie-up string.

go ahead and wind the yarn -- I happened to have some worsted weight yarn scrap so used that and I wound it around the fork about 40 times, being careful not to get too close to the end of the tines so that the yarn does not slip off.

 

I tied up the extra string bit, slid the whole thing off of the fork tines and proceeded to cut on each side of the tied bit.

(edited in - actually you get a tighter tie if you slip it off the fork before tying)

Once cut it did need a bit of trimming of ends but it came out nice and full and puffy!

I should have put something beside the pom-pom so you could see the finished size but then again all you have to do is look at the width of your forks in your kitchen drawer and that will tell you about how wide your pom-pom would be.

Now you could try this same process with with a Large Serving Fork and you will get a much larger pom-pom and you can still use the fork to carve your Sunday Roast (or maybe you are having an Easter Turkey Dinner).  I would think it would work best with a fork where the outside tines go straight out rather than sort of narrow towards the end.

So next time you are thinking you need some pom-poms think of your dinner fork!

Hope everyone is having a nice LONG weekend. 

PS.  Notice a slight difference in the photos above? There are new options on Picasa which is the program I use to edit my photos...  rounded corners, borders, different colour choices for borders.   I am just experimenting so things may be a bit of a circus with the pictures on the blog until I settle on something I like and that is worth the fussing over...

 

Waste Paper

With the Eco - movement, is there such a thing as waste paper?  If you are old enough -- and that means if you went to school in the 1960's or the decade earlier, there was such a thing as a waste paper basket in every class room.  It was simply called a waste paper basket as a nice version of garbage pail...  Everything went into that pail, apple cores, broken pencils and reams and reams of paper.  There was not a recycyle bin in those days.  Those were very rich and wasteful years, because before that, in the 1930's and 40's my mother told me  that if you wrote a letter to someone you would write it in pencil so that the receiver could erase what you wrote and write a letter on the same paper and send it back to you or onto someone else.  The Depression Years taught alot of people how to reuse and recycle.  Then we promptly forgot it in the 50's and 60's and even into the 70's...

Something clicked into our psyche in the 80's and the movement to save our enviroment began to gain some steam.   Now, we don't think we HAVE to recycle or remake, or reuse things, but many of us choose to do that sort of thing because we don't want to waste what we have, just in case we run out of the raw materials, or at least to prolong the time until we do run out...

Now, that is alot of deep thinking for my latest project...

My hubby delivers daily newspapers every single night, he goes to pick up his stacks of papers at 1am and is home around 5am, having delivered some 200 or so papers in time for the subscribers to read their morning paper along with sipping their first cup of coffee of the day...

Those newspapers come in a variety of bundles wrapped in brown craft paper -- he gets 2 or 3 sheets of this brown paper every single night.   It has been weighing on my mind that this paper goes into the recycle bin once he has opened up his bundles...

So, I have been formulating an idea of what I can use this paper for...
I cut the sections of brown paper into 4 inch wide strips that are about 15 inches long.  I have been getting 6 of these strips from each piece of brown paper.   I even take the time to iron the pieces of 4" x 15" sections so they are nice and flat and not too wrinkledy...
I works quite well.   Some of the brown paper gets smudges -- which is what it is supposed to do, to protected the daily newspaper (who wants wet or ripped newspapers?)

Then once the pieces I have cut are nice and smooth, I stack 4 together and sew, using a heavier type thread down the middle and fold over to make "Pages".   I find that I can do 4 sets of these and I even sew the last page of one set to the first page of the next set.   You can only to 4 sets together because the foot I have doesn't do too well when one side of the seam is quite "high" while trying to sew two pieces of paper together...

I also use big stitches, if the stitches are too small, they just cut the paper.  

So, Now I am into making these little booklets, that have become great list making booklets.   We use them for grocery lists, mostly, but also for what needs to be cleaned lists...  Lists of marks to keep track of knitting rows, decreases and increases.  Lists of quilt block pieces, and lists of things in my etsy store. 

Then I had one of those "LIGHT BULB" moments.... I had  the idea because I found for only 50 cents at the second hand store that fusible stuff for fabric, that doesn't come with paper backing -- I think one of the brand names for it is Misty Fuse.  So, the bright idea was to iron this fusing stuff onto scraps of fabric --- and I do have quite a big bin of scrappy fabrics.  Then once the fusing stuff is nicely on the properly cut piece of fabric, I fuse it to the first and last pages of my brown paper note pads...

Now, I can feel slightly superior (we all need that even if we don't admit it out loud) that I am using this craft paper for a very useful purpose, and not only do my little booklets save buying dollar store note pads -- that maybe are not made from recycled paper -- but also they look pretty too, and make use of my fabric scraps all in one go...

So, my current project (really I can only make one of these books each day with the amount of brown paper, hubby brings back home from his newspaper bundles) gives me something to occupy myself, even if I don't feel like sewing or knitting or crocheting or walking the dog or even cleaning toilets!

Now, I can say I am saving the world -- just a little bit, anyway...

Whimsy

This little lady is a self portrait of sorts...    She is kinda chunky in the body and not too concerned about wearing matching  tops, slacks or sweaters.  Sometimes she finds a funky necklace or broach or ring at the second hand store and wears them every day for a month  then puts them away and forgets them.

Most mornings she forgets to brush her hair and it goes a bit wild when she takes the dog for a walk before anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake.   She likes to sit on the balcony of her townhouse and look down on her little piece of land where her daisies and hostas, and peppermint are just peeking through the soil and pine for the days, soon to come, when she can get out and plant some geraniums (she plants red geraniums every year in memory of her Mom) and tries to grow some beans or tomatos or spinach.

There's not much more in life that a little lady like this could ask for and she finds herself to be happy most of the time...

Well, now, the dog Pearl, is anxiously waiting for her walk in the park, so away we go....

Check out the Needle and Thread Network today for links to blogs all across Canada.  Stop in and visit and say hello -- everyone loves it when you leave a comment -- remember if you visit someone in real life, you do say something so just cause it is the virtual world, you shouldn't visit without telling them that you enjoyed coming by...

PS.  I should say that this post was somewhat inspired after reading this blog...  http://maryanntate.blogspot.ca/  - a cloth doll maker's diary (also on the needle and thread network)

Undun

"She's come undun
She didn't know what she was headed for
And when I found what she was headed for
It was too late..."

That bit of lyric from the Guess Who song, UNDUN seems to pop into my head whenever I have to redo something or undo a project that has not worked out. 

Now as I understand it, Randy Bachman wrote the song about a girl at a party who took LSD that did not agree with her, and then of course, It was too late...

Now when I start a project (back a day or two to WIP Wednesday Granny Poncho) then get to a point where it has progressed some distance, I think of that song and wonder if it is too late.  And of course it is NOT!  Even though I had decided to make a poncho and had crocheted almost two full balls of yarn, I decided, it wasn't working or looking like it would suit me at all, so I started pulling the yarn and soon it all came undun!

Rerolled into a nice ball, and my crochet hook sitting idle by the ball of yarn, I started to look through my books and magazines for something else to begin work on.

I haven't yet decided.

Collections

This week I have been busy looking at my STUFF...

Did you ever hear what George Carlin had to say about Stuff?  Life is trying to find a place to keep your Stuff -- that's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff... (check out You Tube for a video of George talking about Stuff)

Well, some of my Stuff, though it is not really in the way seems to be spending its time in boxes being forgotten  about and even though these pretty things once made me happy to just look at I don't seem to have enough shelves so I can look at my THINGS...

So some of the things in these cardboard boxes in closets or the basement has just been sitting for too long.  I have come to the conclusion that these pretty things have worn out their welcome in my house...

It seems like I have been in front of the computer for hours every day this week!  I have been adding things to my ETSY (just click on the word etsy if you are curious to see more) store.  

Sometime in the late eighties I began collecting evening bags.  They just caught my eye and in those days, I really did go out to evening 'bashes' and had occassion to wear something pretty!  So a collection developed.  Then as with some collections, family and friends notice, so when they see something that would go with your collection they pick them up where every they find them and you get additions to your collection for birthdays or christmas or even just cause they thought of you (and isn't that always nice?)

But, I don't go out much anymore and I thought these evening bags could be made useful again.   One thing I will tell you, in researching them, I was somewhat surprised that My particular favourites were not particularly sought after...   See that gold bag up there?   Similar bags, same brand name, were listing on various collectible sites for as much as $99.00!   I can't remember where, or how much I paid for it, but certainly not that much. 

But I am selling in my shop, I don't price it quite that high, cause I do want to sell it and make someone else happy to wear it and show it off... 

Well, my head is getting a bit clogged up this week checking out stuff on the internet.  Now that I have achieved one goal this week, my other goal still looms -- it is getting late to be doing income taxes, so that is what is on my agenda now.

Just have to give myself a bit of a kick in the butt, load the tax prep program and get with it.   Once I get going it never takes as long as I thought it would, so....

I think I will have a cuppa tea first....

WIP Wednesday - Granny Poncho

Yesterday I joined a Crochet-A-Long on Le monde de Sucrette  I received a few balls of Vanna's Choice Yarn for Christmas/Birthday gifts and was planning to start another granny square afghan, but when I saw Angie's post about this Granny Poncho it seemed to fit perfectly what I wanted.

Sometimes I get up really early, like 4:30 am but there is often a bit of a chill in the house and I drag around a quilt wrapped around my shoulders -- seems I can never find a sweater - but there is always a quilt on the back of one of the chairs in the computering room... 

So I figured a granny square poncho can as easily be laid on the back of my computer chair and once it is over my head and on my shoulders, it will stay in place unlike a quilt that keeps sliding off.

So this is the start to my poncho.  I haven't really planned out the colours for it as my other Vanna's Choice Yarns are green and a grey tweed, which won't go with this burgundy.  I am thinking that I would like to "progress" the colours of yarn in wide bands from this burgundy through a even deeper red to a middle then dark brown and onto a black -- I think that is called ombre, when the colours progress from light to dark or the other way around.

I am also linking up to The Needle and Thread Network  and Freshly Pieced.

Today, is a day at home, so I will be working on my granny poncho and doing some furniture organizing in my sewing room.  I am planning to  build/create a ironing surface on top of a old dresser (a project I saw somewhere on the internet).   This hopefully will eliminate an old rickedy ironing board that I found about 10 years ago sitting by a neighbourhood garbage bin...  Yeah, if its a good enough find, I do take home other people's junk!

PS.  and if you have found me through the two WIP links, check back in my blog to the previous post about my adventure to the Fibre Fest here in Abbotsford last weekend and the project that I created after learning a bit about rug hooking.