Vacation, Surgery and Fall Colour

Hello again!

Well, as usual, its been a very long time since my last post. And as usual I have many reasons as to why! LOL

Two days after my last post, I had gall bladder surgery. That was so much fun!! NOT! Along with it came a bit of a recovery period. We then took a week and went to our favorite cottage in Nova Scotia! And what a week it was! WOW!!!! We were originally going to go in September but put it off because of my surgery. It turned out to be such a blessing because while we were there, the fall colours were at their peak and they were spectacular, to say the least. I took almost 1,500 photographs that week. Thank God for digital is all I have to say!!!

I will only be posting the photos from this trip today and will let you in on what I am working on now in the very near future, but I make no promises!! LOL How do I chose a handful oh photos out of 1500?

I am going to post the photos without commentary. No need for it. Some of the cliffs in the photos are a few hundred feet high.

Others are almost 600 feet high. All the photos were taken along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia around Economy and Parrsboro. An interesting fact is that the Bay of Fundy is in the running for one of the NEW 7 Wonders of the World and I sure would appreciate you voting for it! Apparently, there is so much water that flows in and out of the Bay of Fundy, that if I have this right, in one 12 hour tide change, there is enough water coming into the Bay of Fundy to fill the Grand Canyon 6 times! Imagine that! It is one of the most beautiful places on earth to me.

I should add too that I have this real fascination for light and dark shadows. When I walk in the forest, I try to catch scenes in the shade with a bit of sun poking thru the trees and lighting up just one small leaf or bush. I think it will be evident in some of the photos.

These are the photos. Talk to you soon!

Needle Minder and Soup

Hello!

I think I figured out why I don't post more often! This past Sunday, after 2 1/2 hours of typing, editing, correcting, and fiddling with photos, I was doing my final proof reading when "POOF", it was all gone! Boy was the air blue around here!!!!

It was supposed to be another post on another birthday, this time mine! My kitchen is lime green and sort of a purple colour with white cupboards and yes, as putrid as that may sound, I am just so gifted in the decorating department!!! Flowers were given and received in love from the better half, a wonderful lime green and bright pink!

So on to the Needle Minder part of this post. I finished the Sumptuous Surfaces course and needed a new project to work on that was just a little bit different but quick to finish. Our local stitching guild is having their stitching retreat in October and I had an idea that maybe we could get the members at the retreat to stitch up a little needle minder. If you aren't sure what a needle minder or keeper is, you can check out this web site. (click on the word "this" and then scroll down to the bottom of the page)

The pattern I was using for the needle minder came from the September 2011 issue of Cross-Stitch and Needlework Magazine. The article was called "Autumn Thumbtacks" and since I had no need for thumbtacks, I thought I would make the button but instead of gluing a thumbtack to the back of the button, I would glue one half of a pair of magnet on the back. I did buy the 3/4 of an inch make your own button kit called for though I am thinking there might be various qualities of such kits and there might be kits out there that are better than the one I was able to find here.

The article in the magazine offers 3 patterns and a selection of DMC floss to use. I used one of the stitch patterns and the colour choices offered.

This is the "Make your own Button" kit that I purchased at the local fabric shop.

Your fabric goes into the white piece, right side down into the white piece, you then push in the actual button face onto the back of the fabric and then attach the button back and you use that blue thing above to push the back of the button onto the front. I have shown the white and blue piece above, and then both sides of the front and then the back below them.

The completed needle minder is shown here:

I honestly give a standing ovation to those women who can write blogs almost every day and post photos in the most pretty settings with artfully arranged flowers and embellishments. Unfortunately, that is NOT me as I am finding out. I admit I had more fun taking the actual photo above than I did making the button!! As I said, I am not good at what I call "froo froo", all the frilly background decorations to enhance the beauty of what I am trying to show, for your viewing pleasure. I have two placemats. One is blue and the other is a Christmas theme. LOL I picked the blue to showcase my needle minder! So, camera in hand, and needle minder, and placemat, I go outside on a gorgeously sunny day, with monsoon winds blowing. So, just as I get everything set up, a gust of wind blows it all away. As I got things set up again, the dog would make off with the placemat, or try to eat one of the flowers. So, I set it up and shoot quickly!

If you look at the picture two above, of the front and back of the various button parts, you will see that the button back has a bit of a hook in it that you use to sew it to whatever you are sewing the button to. You have to remove that hook before you put the button together. The hook has to be removed so that you can glue the one piece of the magnet to the back.

If you are thinking of making the button, some heavy weight training is needed before putting the button together if you are using the button kit I purchased. I used 28 count Lugana for the fabric and then 2 threads for the stitching and it made for a little bit of bulk. Before making the button, you have to trim down the fabric to about 1/4 to less than 1/2 an inch outside your stitching area. It still leaves a bit of bulk so its a bit of a bugger trying to get the back of the button attached to the button front. I just about dislocated a shoulder pressing down on that blue thing that came in the package. I eventually used a wooden clothes peg and a hammer! LOL So if you give it a try, good luck! Then, another problem. It took three trials of various glues that I had in the house to finally get it to set and the magnet to adhere to the button back. At least the glue matches the lighter green of one of the flosses used.

As you can see, I just glued a piece of ribbon between the back of the button and one of the magnets and at the end of the ribbon I attached a needle threader.

Which brings us to the soup part of this post. It was taking so long for the glue on the button back to dry that I decided to make a pot of soup. When my husband saw the vegetables I had lined up for the soup, he volunteered to go into town to get a 45 gallon drum to put on the stove that would be big enough to hold all the vegetables!

This is the soup.

Ingredients:

2 pork tenderloin roasts, cut into cubes

3 onions, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 whole celery chopped

1 whole turnip, chopped

1 whole butternut squash, chopped

1 whole cabbage, chopped

1 pound of various mushrooms, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 large handful of snow peas, chopped

2 pounds of new potatoes, chopped

3 bay leaves

2 cans of "no salt" chopped tomatoes

1 can of black beans, no salt

1 can of white kidney beans, no salt

1 can of red kidney beans, no salt

a large handful of various herbs

approx. 10 or so cups of water

Of course there is peeling and dredging meat in flour and sauteing going on and the results were stupendous and the freezer is full!

Well, that's it for today. I'm going to "save now" and then take a chance on proof reading and then posting it. Wish me luck!

Part 2 of Sumptuous Surfaces Finished!

Howdy!

Another post, another birthday. Best wishes to my older brother on his 63rd birthday today! WOW! Do I ever feel old! I'm only 5 years behind him! His wife's birthday is the same day as mine I think and is coming up so Happy Birthday to her as well!

It's September and fall has come to PEI. The sea grass is turning its bronzy gold colour and the sea is just a bit darker and colder looking. But, it is all quite spectacular!

Went out for a drive the other day and couldn't believe that we saw 3 eagles that day and me without a good telescopic lens!!! Double drats and crap!

I finished part 2 of the Sumptuous Surfaces course and am quite pleased with the results. I had a bit of a vision of what I wanted when I started the piece but not really knowing very many stitches or too much about where certain stitches would look best, I just sort of plugged along until it felt right. There were alot of stitches taken out, almost as many as those remaining, but again, it very much resembles what I had in mind.

A bit of a close up below.

One small thing though, is that I'm not sure how I want to frame it but it will be nice to try different things until I find something that feels right. I might ask Sharon when I take her next class which starts mid October.

Next project? It's just a small one. In the September 2011 issue of Cross-Stitch and Needlework Magazine, they have an article on making "Autumn Thumbtacks". The thumbtack idea wasn't too appealing to me but I liked the idea of stitching up a small pattern and making it into a button and instead of gluing a thumbtack to the back, I would glue one of a pair of magnets to the back to use on my fabric when stitching as a needle minder. It is complete and I have also attached a piece of ribbon to it to hold a needle threader. I'm not sure the glue I used is strong enough but it is taking longer to dry than I thought so hopefully I will have pictures to put on here real soon!

Enjoy the wonderful cool weather!

WOW! Its Aug. 30th, my sisters birthday! Hope you have a wonderful day Lash and a great year ahead. You certainly deserve it!

Well, I finished part 1 of the Sumptuous Surfaces course. I feel that I could have added more decorative and raised stitches, but learning the stitches I did use took long enough and I really need to proceed to Part 2 of the course, so left it as is. I used invisible thread to sew on the two shells. Note to self, if I ever get to a craft store, or stitch store (no stitch stores on the island), then I need to get some wooden and glass seed beads as I have very very little of either.

The completed Part 1 piece.

I read the notes on Part 2 and I can't say I was lost, but, I wanted to try something WAYYYYY out there, for me anyways; something way outside my comfort zone. So, I decided first, to apply some paint to my fabric. I had recently purchases two skeins of some very colourful yarn. One was in a sort of orangy, peachy, gold tones, and the other, greens, blues and turquoises. Those are the colours I wanted on my fabric. This was my first attempt at fabric dying.

I had a very limited supply of fabric paint that I had purchased for experimenting and had never used. I had a large supply of acrylic paints, craft quality and didn't know how it was going to react with the stitching fabric but what the heck. Jump in and see what happens.

This is what I ended up with and I have to say that the photo does not do the piece justice. It was horrible!!! LOL It actually looks quite nice in the photo but the centre part just looks like I took a batch of paint and blobbed it down and the colours were starting to get muddy. Honestly, it looks much much nicer in the photo than in person. I did water down the paints, both acrylic and fabric, and wet the sponge, dabbed the sponge from the paint to a piece of paper towelling to make sure the paint wasn't too globby or heavy and then sponged the fabric. I wet the fabric first, put it on a wet piece of paper towelling and then put the whole thing onto plastic. I kept the painted fabric moist for hours and hours before heat setting it with an iron. I actually quit painting the fabric way before I got to this, but the colours were so faint that I kept going back after I put all my paint supplies away, and got them all out again and reapplied the paint. Hence the blob from just way too many applications of paint.

I disliked this one so much, because of the dark blob in the centre, that I found two more pieces of fabric and ended up with these additional two samples.

Again, the photos do not do the fabric pieces justice. The upper piece is quite colourful and I think would be lovely doing a floral motif all over it. That will probably be used for project 3.

In actuality, I thought that the project 3 piece, the upper of the two above pieces, was going to be the fabric that I was going to use for Part 2 of this course. Again, I wanted to do something outside my comfort zone and something I had never done before is to write or add lettering to fabric. I didn't really know how I was going to do this but thought I better start with a stencil. I live in a small town, population 14,000 and no embroidery store, and few of any other type of store. Believe it or not, I was able to find two stencils in town. One was 3 inche lettering and the other 1 inch letters. Well, I wasnt't going to use the stencils for the first time on the piece I wanted to use for Part 2 of the course, so I decided to use the first piece of fabric that I coloured, the piece pictured way up there, which I said ended up with the blob in the centre. I figured it wasn't going to be much use for anything so I will use it for experimentation...

Okay, so I have made the decision that I wanted to write something on my fabric. What to write? This was such a long learning process! Hence Sharon's suggestion to just start writing ideas and see what came up. I finally decided I wanted to write "I AM HERE". Don't ask me why, its just something I needed to do.

Well, it's true what they say on TV.. Happy accidents do happen... WOW!!! I used my 1 inch stencil first and the letters were way too large for the size of piece I was doing. So I took some acrylic paint brushes, watered down some acrylic paints and started hand printing the same words in different colours to see which was best. Well, I ended up liking what I ended up with. Again, the photo does not do the piece justice.

So, the fabric I was going to discard is what I am using for my Part 2 exercise.

I now needed a focal point. Okay, I haven't gotten the whole creative art journal process down yet, but how can I create something in the journal when I have no idea what the possibilities are? My supply of what I will call Mixed Media art supplies is limited and other than travelling about 80 KM to the nearest Michaels Craft Store and paying an arm and a leg for crap, and there are no art or embroidery shops on the island, which means ordering online, which means at least 2 weeks delivery date if it is coming from the U.S., I am stuck using what little I have. And don't hastle me about ordering in Canada. The price difference would buy me a new car!

Anyways, I looked online for ideas and came across something interesting. A Dorset Button. Jump in the car, drive 5 KM into town, buy plastic rings after an hour of searching, come home and end up with this. I am not pleased with it as a centre piece to this design and may keep it in mind for something else. But, another happy accident. I accidentally left a photo in the scanner of the photograph I took of a bird that I had scanned to use for my Part 1 exercise. I love how it made my scan of the Dorset Button jump out. Hmmm wonder where and how I can use that again? LOL

And so the process continues.... I am not using the Dorset Button and have come up with another idea. I stitched it on yesterday afternoon and then decided on the way to bed at midnight last night that I didn't like the colour of perle cotton that I used so ripped it all out. I will try another colour after I get the dishes done, and the house vacuumed and the laundry done... Sigh...

Enjoy your day! Its brilliantly sunny here after a very windy couple of days as Hurricane and Tropical Storm Irene blew through. Looks like sun for a few days. YIPPY!!!!

Sharon B's Sumptuous Surface Course

Hello!

Summer is almost over and there is a touch of autumn in the air. The sun is shining and there is a bite to the wind..... I'm almost glad for the year to be over as the summer has been horrendously cold and wet tho I shouldn't complain as there is drought and flooding and hurricanes and things in the world.

In any case, I have taken a new course with Sharon B, Sumptuous Surfaces and love it!!! Sharon puts on great classes with wonderful notes and instructions. She has a blog that shows tons of stitches with instructions on how to do them.

This is my first piece which covers the first half of the course. I have to do a bit more work on it to finish it up.

My house is such a mess as I have spent countless hours on the computer printing out pages of stitch instructions or looking up Youtube videos on how to do the various stitches. My first piece probably took me close to 50 hours to complete, if not more.

Sharon says that to complete a 4 in by 6 in piece, which is what mine is, should take about 15 hours or so. That is probably a fair assessment. What took me so long is that I had to learn a few stitches, tried them in my piece, didn't like the floss/thread I was using, or didn't like the look of the stitch or found the stitch hard to do in the floss I was using and then kept ripping them out of my work and redoing them in different thread. Though the first piece took that long, I'm sure the others will be closer to Sharon's estimate of 15 hours.

I absolutely LOVE this kind of work. Any stitching that I had ever worked on previously was always done by following a pattern; ie. this colour and this cross stitch goes in this spot. This is the first time that I ever designed my own piece and then put in the stitch I wanted in the place I wanted, in the colour I wanted. It was quite liberating and exciting!

This is a close up of the left corner of the piece. I have a small seashell to add to the white spot in the lower left corner.

This is the right side and I have a seashell to add over the ferns/seaweed in the right corner.

Thanks for visiting!

See you next time!

Nothing in particular...

Well, i just about dropped a load when i realized it has been 3 months since i posted last... Spring has finally come to our island, now that it is summer! Today, June 23rd, is the second day this spring/summer that we have had temperatures over 20C and that is unheard of for our area... We have hardly seen the sun at all but i will NOT complain because i see there are so many areas in the world much worse off than we are!

I have not been totally lazy, tho i will admit i have not been out in the yard to do yard work since about the first of June! I have just planted my vegetable garden today and have no idea if i will get anything from it!

Anyways, in my wisdom or lack thereof, i decided to do a spreadsheet of all my unfinished or kitted stitching projects. Oh Dear!!! I have over 45 now... So, i am in the process of finishing some. I love starting new projects!!! I could care less if i finish them!! Not a good thing to do!

So, i am finishing what i am calling my "Mouse House". It is a pinkeep that is featured in the March 2009 Cross Stitch and Needlework Magazine. I have everything stitched, the pinkeep, the scissor holder and the scissor fob. Just put them together... So that this post isn't totally boring, (as i notice i have lost my few followers, and i don't blame them) i will show you what i have so far!

i haven't done too much with my art quilting journal. I have made a few designs in it and am collecting up fabrics to start on a project. It was a great class and learning experience!

We are getting pretty excited here as Prince William and his wife Kate are expected for a visit in a weeks time. They are both coming to the town i live in so i will have to decide if i want to fight traffic to see if i can catch a glimpse...

In the meantime, enjoy your summer!

Art Journal still in week 2

Hello!

We still have snow on the ground but if we get a few more days like today, when it got above zero Celcius it should go quickly. I hate to say it but they are calling for a 10 + cm snow storm for this saturday!! Give me a break!! It's April!

Well, I did go out for some pictures when I said I would in my post below but didn't find anything or anywhere to take photos in town. This past sunday, I went to the north shore of the island and had a whole afternoon of fun! I walked around a fishing wharf full of lobster traps and fishing pots and old anchors and hooks and had a wonderful time! The dog thought she died and went to heaven. Nothing more inviting than a fishing wharf full of fish and cat smells.

I was really lucky because the first thing I came across was some baby seals! Though we got tons of snow this past winter, our temperatures didn't get extremely cold (meaning -20 or -30 C like usual) so there wasn't much ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As such, the grey seals, which usually use the pack ice to have their babies, had no where to go except on our beaches. I was lucky to find some babies on shore. The photos are cropped so don't think I got as close at it might appear!!!

This is a baby that hasn't started to turn colour yet, or hasn't lost its baby fur. It is still totally white.

This baby was starting to turn grey, with a dark strip down its back and the face had turned dark.

After taking a gazillion pictures of the seals, I got down to business on the wharf. One thing I learned about taking photos of a particular colour, when you go to a fishing village or wharf for photos of blue things, you are going to get the same colour blue. Everyone uses Marine Blue!!! So, in my photos below, i have a mussel shell, a javex bottle and a shot gun shell that washed up on the beach, some rope, a tarp, gravel/rocks, fish containers, various painted woods and a window with a cat!

I must say though, it was the most enjoyable afternoon walking around taking photos! Can't wait to do it again! Yes, I am totally behind in my class work, but that is the best part of the class; each person works at their own speed!

On to the next project!