Some Sites I Love

The title says it all. Am I the LAST person to find this site ? http://kuler.adobe.com/   It has very cool colour combos. It is sure to be valuable when I chose dye colours to do together. I am making a wedding quilt. And they like purple. Hmmm..

Calligraphy http://www.fonts.com/FavoriteFonts/CalligraphicFonts.htm .  I want to learn more calligraphy and will use these fonts to practice with. 

And I can use this graph paper for calligraphy to use! http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/calligraphy/      

Look at how nice some of these fonts are. 

And my new favourite:    http://www.shopgoodwill.com/    I can’t believe I have never been here before. What a gem of useless stuff! Including the belt below. But there are some good things—like cheap sewing machines, nice craft items and groovy old stuff. I wish I could order something, but not in Canada I’m afraid.

It is made from a car safety belt. 8 Bucks and its yours.

 

Last for today is this little gem:   http://bookweb.sunpig.com/index.htm

This site has everything for bookmaking—tools, techniques, bindings. You name it....    The half hitch millipede is awesome!!!

        

Enough for today!

How Time Flies!

I cannot believe it has been a week since my last post. How do other people write every day? I bet they are all retired or sneak in posts at work.

As of this date only one person knows about my secret site. I don’t know if I will ever post my blog, or keep it a secret. I think I am doing this as an online journal, but who knows.

I have been working on this:

It is from Quilting With Style, my all time most favourite quilt magazine that is now kapoot. But I am fickle and my new favorite magazine is Quilting Arts.

Anyway, this thing is called “Pythagoras' Lute” because this is the actual mathematical expression of this equation. I could care less. I just like the pattern. Or I did until I started piecing the damn thing.

Here is what I have so far:

Not bad, I guess. I have been working on this for 2 years. Last month I dusted it off and decided to wok on it one hour a day—minimum—to get it done. I am so happy I did that! Now to piece it and quilt it. That is the easy part to me, so here goes!

BTW—this is all hand-dyed fabric using ‘cracked ice’. A friend in the USA sent me a bolt. I really wish I could get another bolt of this great fabric to dye. Here are my samples:

These are a mixture of Dharma and G&S procion dyes.

Week-End Fun!

 

Today the hubby finally finished the boat and we are off to the lake. I am so looking forward to some fishing, soaking up some sun and reading my book.

2pm

Well we have been gone for 57 minutes. The boat has some issues and it will have to go to the shop and get a tune up or something.

 

So instead, without further ado, I’ll show you some Shibori I did. Thanks very much Wil for the great instructions. Wil is a dye friend who sometimes offers classes. This month the shibori dyeing was on the schedule. Here is a close-up.

And here is another piece.

So how do you do it? First, you need plumbing tubes of between 2-5”. I used the 2, 4 and 5” pipes that I purchased at Home Hardware. 

I wrapped a 1/2 meter of fabric around a pole. Then you wrap string around as shown. At the top you can see where the fabric is pushed up together. The bottom shows how I spaced the string. I didn’t use anything fancy, just twine.

Then I added Cayman Island green. I love that colour. BTW, the fabric was soaked in soda ash, then dried on a clothes line. I wrapped the fabric dry. Because it is not a pure colour, I thought it would be a good one to use for this technique as it will strike the fabric in different ways.

These are the three poles I did. I also used cardinal red and golden yellow on the other pieces. (don’t look at my unhealthy lawn).

And here is the reveal! I batched these for 3 hours in the hot, hot sun. I think they turned out very nice. These are straight off the poles and not washed or anything..

 

I also did something I love to do, and that is line dyeing. Pour dye over a piece of fabric and see how it goes.

This one has cardinal red on one end, then I turned it around, and did Cayman Ifsland green on the other.

I then HAD to play around with the piece. When dry, I dripped golden yellow all over the lovely caymen island green and cardinal red… this is what happened. But I need to do another red/green combo soon.

Flower Boxes-done.

With this incredible weather, I have been in a hurry to plant my flowerboxes, however it took 3 evenings to complete.



I have 2 drops of blood left due to the incredible mosquito activity. I have never seen the mosquito's this bad.



I seem to do more flower boxes every year. I had so many extras, that I had to plant some in my garden.



Its good to be done. Now to get the grass green!

Hot Times!

It is sooo hot today. It is 30° C today. I think that is 1000° F, but I could be wrong. I live in the Arctic—yes I do—and that is very, very hot. 

I still need to plant my flower boxes, but at least I have the flowers now.

Lots of stock and evening smelly nice things. Can you believe this batch cost about 225 bucks? Sheesh. Dont read this Mookie..

Here is my back garden patch that hubby and I will work on this weekend.

I am getting poop from the horse neighbours on one side and the chicken neighbours on the other. Their gardens grow so well I should just steal buy from them. But this will be the first time we plant and I really want to see some product from the earth that was created by our hands.

Every chance I get I take a picture of my girl Ripley. Isn’t she pretty?

That’s it. I’m going to have a beer now. Alexander Keefe Premium White. With a twist of orange, of course..

Just learning

 

One of the things about using new computer software is the time it takes to learn even the most simple commands. So it is with great relief that I heard about Windows Live Writer.

This is my first post with it, and it is easy to use and has a familiar interface.

Here is the same picture I sent in of my Count Dracula bag.

Nice! I lets me put in shadows, make the picture bigger and add margins or borders if I want.

I can change the font, the size,

and the colour!

And one can add a video….

This is from my Zune and I think it was installed with the player. I am adding it here so I remember how to do this in the future..

This is a great program. Goggle it and see for yourself.

My not-so-secret obsession

I heart bags. Cloth bags, plastic bags, handbags, sports bags, computer bags--you name it, I have probably made one.

So this has been my most recent favorite.

I use it for toting my lunches to work.

But this week I was going on a work trip and wanted something small, with a zipper to hold my gadgets--all the wires, cords and dodads needed for modern living. I spent all of 31 minutes making it and wish I had spent a bit more time to make it look more professional, because I love it dearly.



Both of these bags are a result of a recent bidding war I had on Ebay. They are used sheets. Now who else would want them? I had to pay over 10 bucks for each of them since someone else obviously wanted them. In total I probably spent 30.00 to get them to my 'foreign' address, but I think they are worth every penny. I smile every time I see them. Even my Roberto Cavalli sandals don't make me smile like that..