I'm doing a little spinning

between everything else, and for the first time, it is a multicolor dyed wool top. This one is made by Louet, and is called Northern Lights, and I'm finding it very easy to spin, even though I'm a beginner, having started spinning this past spring. I loosened / untangled the wool tops into a plastic bag, and am continuously spinning out of the bag. When I stop, I can wind the end of the spun yarn around the knob on my orifice hook, to hold it in place, and then come back and pick up where I left off.

While my first thought was that it was going to be too bold and splotchy - it's coming out downright gorgeous! I love the color, and am hoping it will be enough to make a hat, scarf, or maybe even small shawl??? The package said I have 1/ 2 pound of wool top, and I'm spinning as fine as I dare to (maybe it will be a fine fingering weight?), but I'll just have to be patient and wait and see.

Carving rubber stamps

is so much fun! For some reason, I just needed to carve some leaves, so I carved large leaves on both sides of a smaller carving block, and stems with leaves on both sides of a larger carving block. I did a little test printing, and I like the way they came out!

Above is a picture of one side of the carved blocks (they are resting on my drying board, since they were still wet from rinsing, and below is the other side.

Of course, I had to do some test prints to see what they would really look like when I use them to print with, so I tried them out in my journal.

I think I might like to carve away the remaining background in the leafy branches on the right, but the leafy branch on the right is ok.

My yellow journal pages had already been colored with watercolor paints, which I had pressed plastic wrap into. After it was mostly dry, and the color would stay put, the plastic wrap was removed so that it could finish drying. I woner what I have that could be used to finish the page?

Chickadee for Michelle

Now that Michelle has received my little chickadee journal quilt, here it is. The background was made by free hand cutting branches and leaves, then attach them to the background fabric and batting with large embroidery stitches. The backing was pieced where the sleeve would cover most of it, leaving the center unstitched so that I would be able to turn it right sides out later. Then it was layered, right sides together, and stitched around the outer edges, trimmed and turned. The quilting was completed next, because it was easier at that time. Once the chickadee was hand painted onto white fabric and appliqued onto the quilt, I decided where and how large the ribbon nest should be, and then the ribbons were tacked into place with beads. There are three buttons for eggs because the chickadee will have three children just like I do.

Balloon landed

right in front of our yard just a few minutes ago! Now that is something very rare, although in the 11 years we have lived in this house we have had one land a block in one direction, a block in the other, and some that have passed over our trees low enough to touch the tops. Once they touched down, they were considering whether to drag it to the cul-de-sac or into our yard to flatten and pack it up.

My quilt is going to Houston!

After returning from picking up my quilt from APNQ Quiltfest in Seattle this afternoon, I collected my mail from the mail box and quickly scanned for envelopes from Houston. I had entered two quilts, and only saw one small envelope. As I was preparing myself to read a rejection notice, I decided to sort the rest of the mail first, and at the bottom was a large envelope from Houston! My small Gilded Scrolls quilt was rejected, but Janet's Influence had been accepted into the IQA Quilts: A World of Beauty show!!!

Water - sketchbook

These are some of the shapes I'm thinking about stitching on the water quilt to represent plankton, which is a key source of food for aquatic life in fresh and salt water. Some of the organisms spend their entire life at this microscopic size, while others eventually grow into sea stars, sea urchins, fish and other sea creatures.

Water - today's progress

My lace is dry, and as you can see, it looks much different than it did on the stabilizer. It has also done a bit of shrinking, as I knew it would.

The waves have much more dimension with the lacy waves laid in place, and they have been pinned down, until I get them stitched. My plan is to only attach them along the top edges, leaving the lower edges free, and the lowermost wave will have it's edge folded out of the way when the edges are being finished. Right now, I think I'll face the edges, leaving the quilted back showing, and nice clean edges on the front, because I think that a traditional binding would be out of place on this quilt.

As soon as I get a chance, I'll do some free hand cutting and free motion lace so that you can see how they were created. It probably won't happen until next week, as the APNQ Quiltfest is this week, and preview night is tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm also installing the new software that was needed to continue creating my website.