Birds and Bees…In Motion

This last weekend, my friend Sami and I decided to head to the coast and dedicate ourselves to fall craft. We arrived at the beach house with mountains of supplies.

On Saturday morning I woke up to the insane flapping of hundreds of pelicans out on the river.  The sun was shining and the burlap was calling. After moving the dining room table onto the deck, we sorted a pile of coffee bean bags and went to work. The pelicans continued flapping and the bush next to the table was swarming with honey bees, getting in their last hurrah. It was a perfect day to be outside creating.

lunch break: roasted tomato soup and smoked cheddar and peppercorn grilled cheese sandwiches.

bees!

and more sewing

I think the burlap rugs turned out great! i am hoping to add a few big pillows into the mix.

After a long walk in the sunshine,  we met up with Brian and Stacey for dinner at the Pelican Brewery and headed to bed early. Crafting is exhausting!!

Sunday morning, I woke up to more crazy flapping pelicans but not so much sunshine. Perfect day for canning. While Sami spent more time with the burlap, I started canning my veggies. I made spicy pickled carrots, spiced Indian pickled green beans and cauliflower. They are so beautiful!

Sami canned mountains of apples and pears.

We had another night to relax and another morning to wake up with crazy birds, had the BEST prawn tacos in manzanita and headed home with our goodies.

Perfect weekend!! We decided this must be done every year. We even had time to get a little surfing in! We pretty much rocked the weekend!

Hot and Humid, Time to Sew in the Garden!

Every year I get this urge to drag my sewing machine outside when the weather is at its hottest. What the hell? who knows but it is one of my things…That being said, i did have a project to work on and NPR on the radio.

Last winter I took an applique class and made a pillow. I have a few other projects that i want to applique but in the meantime, I have two birthday gifts to create and the crafting spirit was in high gear.

Here are skirts i made this week. I LOVE THEM!

Oh and I made a couple of cute shirts too for my god-daughter and my niece.

FUN!! i’m hot!

Feel free to grab your sewing machine and joining me. I need to make a skirt with a pig on it for my birthday bbq/pig roast!

First Craft of the Year!

2011 began with a day sledding on the mountain, a drink of champagne and a toast to the new year. it was perfect! the following day, i curled up by the fire in my favorite napping chair with a great book and between chapters, took a 3 hour nap. sigh…it was heaven.

After putting all the Christmas treasures away, i signed up for a applique class at  Modern Domestic. it was fantastic!!! the teacher Anna Joyce, was so lovely and helpful. She not only explained the techniques, but she also helped us with  design. the 3 hour class went by so quickly but i did manage to make my first pillow. I want to applique EVERYTHING! beware, you may also receive something appliqued!

60 and snowing? You bet!

This weekend I rounded up some willing participants to make snowglobes! About a month ago i saw these adorable “rustic” snowglobes for sale in a high end magazine for about $40. They were snowmen in a mason jar…i thought, I can do that!  So for the past 5 weeks, i have been collecting jars of all shapes and sizes, testing different glues and levels of glycerin/water ratios.

On Sunday we made all sorts of fun things out of clay for our own globes. I think they turned out GREAT!! Nice work.

 it seems to me that some are more smitten with each other, then the craft at hand

In Deep

My absolute favorite season of the year is upon us and i am in deep. I started another Advent calendar this year for the Hanson Family. I just love making these and they are all sooooo different and goofy. but i love them all.

Ruby is sure that there is room in each pocket for 2 treats per day. and today is day 1! i guess that doesnt make it an official “advent” calendar but you get the point.

For Thanksgiving, i got to celebrate with the Eussen clan. i have really enjoyed meeting another Eussen uncle and his four beautiful daughters and fantastic wife! they are so much fun. We had a perfect meal and i got to make dessert…it was rich but really fun to make. It also contains 6 sticks of butter…YIKES!

I made the sweet little acorns, leaves and pumpkins out of marzipan and then dusted them with edible glitter. i will be doing that again. they are so pretty. and easy to make.

sigh, so now i am cleaning up the piles of felt bits i have left around the house and getting ready to unpack the christmas boxes. YIPPEEE!!! now all i need is snow please. 

Sam does not agree because his bits and pieces dont like being cold.

Another Fun Fall Project

Rick and Jill made these beautiful mirrors by hand-rolling hundreds of magazine pages and adhering them to the wooden frame. I fell in love with them and after realizing there was no way i was going to be handed one of these creations, Rick and Jill offered to teach me how to make my own.

I spent a wonderfully fally day rolling papers and after 4 hours, i came up with this! I love it!!

Inspired

For the past 6 years, i have traveled up to visit my mother’s dear friend Elspeth. When i was a little girl, Elspeth took piano lessons from my mom and often times, she would leave me with a pile of books. Elspeth was something of an enigma to me. She had her PhD in Library Science,  traveled the world on her own, married the love of her life late in life and together, they had built a beautiful home in the Olympic Peninsula, where she raised Irish Setters and did “book things”. I didn’t really understand until recently what those “book things” were. I knew she had a printing press in her basement and I had seen beautiful books, hand bound from local poets, writers and artists all around her home but she was still something of a mystery to me.

Now I consider Elspeth my own dear friend. I travel up to visit her 2-3 times a year and each time i leave her beautiful property, i have a new sense of inspiration and renewal. This weekend was no different. While working on some brochures for her incredible women’s retreat center, Hypatia in the Woods, Elspeth asked me to stay Sunday afternoon for lunch with her Olympia Book Arts Society.

How could i resist? I am so excited that i stayed!! About 5 times a year this group of brilliantly creative men and women gather to work on a Book arts theme. They also bring projects to share that they are working on separately, like Patricia Chupa’s handmade book featuring movable parts that will be on display as part of the Hand2Hand Book Art Exhibit in Seattle this month. I know i am a little dramatic at times, but it was so beautiful, it almost brought me to tears.

Our project was two fold. The first thing we did was create a 6 word sentence. Next we made small books with beautifully crafted papers and stamps placing one word on each page. There were 8 people in the group and we ended up with 8 fantastically different pieces of art. Mine is titled “Toes”. My sentence read: The mud was warm and squishy.

Their second project is ongoing. The group is creating a bound book full of each member’s  imaginations around a specific letter. Each letter will be used eventually. The group has just completed E and is working on F for their January meeting. Because they asked me to be a member, i get to work on the letter F as well!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

Here are some of the “d” and “e” pages. AMAZING!

This was exactly what i needed before the holiday season begins. We are also going to be creating Endless Cards in January, which are these fascinating cards that fold and fold and fold endlessly, with new images emerging each time you fold the card in a new way. Stay tuned, i have to make my template before the meeting.

First Fall Project

Today, as i raced to my car after work in the pouring rain, i noticed the oak tree next to my car had molted and after the squirrels grabbed the nuts, they left all the tops!

I have always loved these wee little felted acorns and finally got around making a bunch!

Music, Snow, Bits and Baubles

It has been well over a month since my last blog posting! that should be illegal! I have been to a few shows that blew me out of the water, read lots of books and crafted till my fingers bled…literally! I want to blog about each and every thing i have done in the past 35 days. Maybe i will get to it! I have pictures.

 I spent Thanksgiving at the coast in the sweetest log cabin i have ever seen with family and good friends. we had sunshine almost every day and lots of good food!  It is also here that i learned to knit earflaps on hats. EVERYONE GETS AN EARFLAP HAT! ok i am getting ahead of myself.   

The weather has not gone above 30 but has dropped well below 20. The chickens are all snug in their coop with red heat lamps to keep their waddles warm (what is keeping my waddle warm?) and Kerouac has gotten a Get Out of Jail Free card because i cant bear to toss him outside in the 14 degree weather. Lucky CAT! Mr Big has decided peeing on the deck is ok in these dier circumstances and timmy and kudra, well they still hang out outside and sleep on my bed 20 hours a day, respectively.     

  

First i would like to give you this link. Last year the calendar was free…this year it is about $5 US. i think it is still worth it and the prints are lovely. They do have a couple of free options too.  http://www.mibostudio.co.uk/#/2010-calendar/4536430197   

Second I have been working on so many projects and fun things, but most of them are christmas presents and since the people I love are also the recipients of many of these gifts, i cant show them yet! this makes me just as sad trust me. I have been busy!

This weekend we are supposed to get snow…or freezing rain. Now to me there is a vast difference between the two options at hand. One is fun and silly and offers hours of entertainment plus visions of cocoa with marshmallows. The other leads to recluse-type nature and the inability to leave your house. i am opting for the snow. I think baking cookies and stoking the fire while watching christmas classic movies it the perfect day. I am pretty i will do this regardless of  snow or ice.

Speaking of Christmas cookies, i have big plans this weekend in that department. On my list this season are caramel, French Macaroons,  marshmallows, sugar cookies and rum balls!  

  

The first two things on my list are the most important. Of course the Rum Balls are a no-brainer and will be made first so i enjoy myself. I have always wanted to make the perfect caramels. i want the kind you can wrap in paper and give as gifts that make people swoon. I also want to make to die for macaroons. I would sell my fingernails for these on a daily basis. Of course the blogs i have found regarding hte making of a macaroon is terrifying. One woman had to do it 9 times before making the perfect cookie. She is my new idol.  I think i am up to the challenge. I want to be that lady who makes macaroons as gifts and in 10 years people will be waiting impatiently for my delivery. i want to be the macaroon lady! I have big dreams. maybe i want to be the caramel and macaroon lady! humph!  So i have been carefully collecting my ingredients and am preparing to spend a very patient and lovely day in the kitchen. Hopefully the chickens have laid enough eggs for me to make a few batches.  

stay tuned! ohhh just loading that picture makes me giddy!

A Beaded Bead?

Last weekend i wandered up to Whidbey Island to visit my god-parents and soak up some beautiful scenery and yummy food.
Before i had even set my bags down, my GM Peggy was taking through all of her craft rooms, of which she has 3 right now, and showed me the incredible projects she has been working on over the past few months. Gorgeous quilts, embroidery, curtains, towels, and then there was the jewelry. Peggy likes to make woven beaded jewlery to relax…she must need to relax a lot because she has hundreds of the most complicated ornate pieces i have ever seen. i have always admired them for the hours of work that goes into each piece.

After i had set my bags down and grabbed a glass of water, Peggy asked if i would like to join her for her beaded  bead class the following day.  A beaded bead you may ask? Oh lord let me tell you! if it can be made, it has been and these ladies are very serious about their craft. i thought sure, why not. it will be a nice time to spend with Peggy doing something she loves and i am always up for a craft.

Peggy took me  to the “bead room” of the house. i was asked to pick out 3 colors-size 11 beads and 1 color-size 14 bead. this was like trying to pick out a puppy at the animal shelter and just when you find the one you want, they take you into another room filled with more perfect puppies to love. Boxes and bags and drawers full of every shade  bead imaginable.

   

After scarfing down a pb&j we headed down to the local library for our class. Everything on Whidbey is cute and has a beautiful view…the library was no exception.  We settled into our room with windows on 4 sides and got to work. As i was reading the instructions that could have been written in russian for all i cared, i started to get nervous. i hate getting behind on a new project. i was anxiously trying to figure out whether i weave the 2 A beads up through the B bead and down through the next two C beads,  or i skip the A bead and move to the next “ladder” and then add 2 A beads. I just looked at Peggy, happily plugging along as i pulled off all of my A beads and started over. She does this to RELAX??? what the hell is a ladder?

Then i figured it out! i loved it! i was having so much fun that when i would finish a row, i would make these deep throated giggles. i was channeling the craft gods and they were responding. We only had time (in  a 3 hour class) to make 1/2 of a beaded bead. The other half would have to be finished at home. I was so excited that after drinking the majority of a bottle of wine, i made 2 more beads and went to bed after midnight.

i think they look like tiny chinese lanterns and i am going to string them up and hang them in my window. i also think they would be really pretty over a christmas tree light.