A Walk in the Woods, Part 2

I've been workin' on the raaaillroad, all the livelong day.....

During a break in the recent rains we've been enjoying, we got out and took a hike in the woods near us. It was a beautiful fall day, warm in the sun with cool air, bright blue sky, everything I've been missing for the past several years.

Look at that sky!

I find nature can be so inspiring, even if it's manmade.

That's a joke, son.

At a glance, everything seemed to have come through the rains and flooding just fine.

But upon close inspection, we could see that the forest got flooded up to our waist height.

All the leaves were muddy.

But near the river, it was obvious the water had risen over our heads, as this bridge is that high. You can see it's covered with debris washed up by the floods.

Fall is on the way!

Mother's Day and Birthday Pictures

For Mother's Day this year, I requested a set of lino cutters. I became interested in the idea after watching this video on Geninne's Art Blog.

I mean, how could I not become interested? If you watched the video, I bet you are interested, too! Anyway, so my family got me a set of lino cutters, and I spent the morning (after eating these wonderful pancakes - recipe here)

playing around and making a stamp. Actually, I made 2: the stamp is double sided.


This is carved from a white plastic eraser. Very easy to cut. I made both a positive and a negative stamp: one side I carved away from the drawn lines and one side I carved into the drawn lines.


And here are the results. I'm pretty happy, altho I can tell this is a skill that needs lots of practice before my stamps will be as fine as Geninne's. And then maybe I can stamp my quilts!

The day before, as in the year of her birth, we celebrated my daughter's birthday. (In 1995, her actual birthday was the day before Mother's Day. It doesn't always happen that way every year.)

She went with two of her friends to a theme park here in Singapore and spent the day getting dizzy and wet.


Here they are, on the train going to the park, all wearing glowing earrings.

My camera seems to have some kind of short in the wiring because if I leave the batteries in it for any length of time, they run empty. And that is what happened on this day, so I didn't get many pictures. But I did post them to my Flickr account, if you are interested.


This is like the linkiest post I've ever made!

Also new and interesting: last week the AWA Choir gave its first two performances, one at a school for special needs kids and one in the lobby of a hospital. We had so much fun. We've had two of our performances cancelled due to the Swine Flu scare, but we picked up an extra one which will be this Thursday. And our final performance is on Sunday. I will miss going to practice twice a week. I've had so much fun and it has been just the best thing to distract me from the move and all the attending intricacies of that. But I guess it's time to focus on moving, anyway. Wahoo.
The choir is hoping to get someone to video tape our final performance, which we will then upload to YouTube. If it happens, I will post the link here.

The Stress Monster Who Ate My Brain

I have discovered that stress really is a damper to my creativity. And the funny thing about it is, I don't really notice the stress. I notice it's effects. Not only does my creativity dry up, but all I wanna do is escape.

I'm tired all the time, my digestive system doesn't work properly, my sleep cycle is off...

but other than that, I feel fine!

Well, this weekend, after my daughter and I were viewing this blog, she got creative and decided to make this little guy.

Kerfuffle

Fleece with polyester fiberfill

Of course, being the meddlesome, overbearing mother that I am, I helped her do it. And it reminded me of some important things:

Even tho I don't feel like it, working on my art is an excellent way of working through the stress. It allows me to feel some control over my situation, and gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

Creating something beautiful is also very calming and stress diffusing. And it's not as painful as exercising, altho I really need to do that too....

So why all this stress?

Because we are planning a move this summer. Out of Singapore. And there's lots of unanswered questions like: where are we going? What will we do there? How will we make money? Where will my daughter go to school? And so forth and so on.

So yeah, plenty to stress about. But can I do anything to answer these questions or settle these issues? Not yet. And we're looking at June or July - months away still. 

Today I'm getting my haircut, going grocery shopping, and I have choir practice. I don't know if I will have time or energy to get into my studio. But, I did go for a long walk this morning. That was good.

And while I was out, I did a toy drop! My first in Singapore!

I made this guy last month, just for fun.

I wont say where I dropped him. If you watch the Toy Society's blog for the next couple of days, you will probably see him there, with his location disclosed. This also gave me a feeling of getting something accomplished this morning. I have wanted to do this for a while now, but have been a bit timid.  Don't want to get in trouble with the authorities...

So that's what's up with me.  What's up with you?

Cute Attack

Last week my daughter had a dream about baby rabbits. She woke up enthralled with their cuteness and described one to me. She held her hand out, palm up, and petted an imaginary bunny sitting on her palm. My imagination worked perfectly to fill in the blank.



I had to wait a few days as I was all out of grey mohair yarn. But the other day while shopping for a blouse and necklace, I was at Holland Village where the yarn store is, so I just popped in and bought a skein.



For days after my daughter's dream, we would hold our hands up and pet the imaginary bunny there and squeal to each other.



So when she got home from school yesterday, I asked her to hold out her hand and then I placed the bunny on it. She decided his name was Stuart. She never names her pets/toys with pet or toy names.

Needless to say, she loves it.

And now onto other things: Blogger has been a real trial for a few days, but I'm so happy that I can finally get pictures posted this morning. Lately many Google related sites have been giving us problems, but hopefully things are going to improve.

And lastly, I am happy to report that Fizzy Pink Lemonade has sold. Hooray! I would post a picture here to remind you, but suddenly, I can't get any pictures to post. Sigh. So much for technology. I will try again tomorrow.

D.I.Y.

click on the pic to see how pretty these beads really are

OK, long story short: I needed a necklace for an outfit that consists of a white dressy tunic blouse over a floor length straight black skirt. It's for the spring concert the choir will give in May. I just bought the blouse yesterday, and wandered for hours trying to find just the perfect necklace. I want something to tie the black and white together, but pulls in lots of colors since it's a spring concert. And, besides that, I just love color as you all know.

So I looked at umpteen stores and found nothing that really did it for me. I was set to give up and go home; I was at the bus stop, actually, when I got inspired. My vision was for a necklace similar to the one pictured above, but with jewel-toned Swarovski bi-cone crystals. Ding! I left the bus stop and went immediately on foot to the bead store in Holland Village (which is where I was already).

I was surprised to find out this store has never carried Swarovski beads, but I made do with these Czech glass beads. It isn't exactly what I had envisioned, and I may still make that necklace, but I'm much happier with it than with anything else I saw.

This is the best part about knowing how to make different things. You know how they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? I've never found that to be true (except, perhaps, in the area of theology. I'll leave that to my DH) - rather being a Jane-of-all-trades can be very satisfying, and certainly costs less than buying something someone else made that you could have made yourself.

I tried the necklace on with the blouse this morning and it looks really great. Now I just need to make earrings....

Translation

Sorry to everyone who asked for a translation for the last post.  I meant to do that and then forgot.  Yes, Ojos de Dios does mean eyes of God.  It also refers to a craft that many of you may have seen, or even made when you were a child, and which kinda reminded me of the way the colors are placed in my quilt.




Thanks for all the wonderful, encouraging comments left yesterday. It was wonderful to wake up this morning and read them all before breakfast. How could it not be a great day after that?

Alouette

Several months ago, I made a chicken using this pattern, and the chicken was used as a toy drop for The Toy Society.

My daughter was appalled that I could let such a cute thing go to strangers, and so I told her that I would make one for her.



Well, during a break from quilting yesterday, I finally obliged her. She had actually wanted a chicken in blue fabrics, but I couldn't find any that inspired me.




But the combination of these fabrics really got my creative juices flowing. And it's nice to have something quick and easy to turn to when the hours and hours of quilting begin to pile up in sore muscles in your shoulders.

However, now that Alouette is finished, I really am going to get back to quilting...

Further Adventures

Today I realized I needed some gifts for the people who provide services for my daughter: her piano teacher, her drama coach, and the people who allow her to ride along with them to school every day. My sister had sent me a picture of some lovely patchwork pot holders, and it was these that provided the inspiration.

Front

Back

The first pair

I will be making at least 3 pairs of these. Tutorial, anyone?

And here's the results for yesterday's cookie fiasco:

I baked up a dozen, and we tasted them before we frosted them. Not very cinnamon-y, but my husband thought they kinda tasted like snickerdoodles. I was hoping for something that would taste and smell very cinnamon-y, especially while baking. But oh well. They tasted fine.

I went ahead and made some powdered sugar frosting, but my green food coloring (purchased in Singapore, of course) is rather lime green colored. I wanted a nice pine color, but I wound up with a not very nice olive color. Oh well, again.



I made a dozen, there's only 7 here, and at the time of posting, they are all gone. I decided to finish batch tomorrow. I will frost them white and put silver decors on them. That will be much more elegant.

File this under Good Ideas:



Recently, I decided it was too much of a hassle to take down this large tub of flour off a shelf over my head whenever I needed a small amount for this or that. So, I started looking around for a container that could hold a small amount of flour, and be more convenient.

I was about to dispose of this jar after transferring the Equal out of it to another container I like to keep it in, when I noticed the suitability of this jar for my other purpose.



One of the things I frequently only need a small amount of flour for is to sprinkle on my board to keep dough from sticking. The lid of this jar twists so that one can sprinkle the contents. Isn't that too neat?

The Next Bit

Well, after I finished the first section, I felt that the second section needed a difference more than just scale. Too much of the same color scheme in a quilt bores me, I guess. So I decided to make it more about pink and green, with a little yellow.

I was really stymied over the weekend trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I discussed the options with my sister, and she reminded me, "it's only fabric." I'm so glad to have that reminder sometimes. So I went ahead and made this next bit, and it just came together like pie.

When Timothy Botts was here last year, I bought a print from him that says:

"The freedom to fail is the essence of creativity (just as the prevention of failure is the essence of conservatism). The creative act must be uninhibited and marked by supreme confidence. There can be no fear of failure. Nothing inhibits so fiercely, or shrinks a vision so drastically, or pulls a dream to earth so swiftly as fear of failure. Albert J Sullivan"

For me, there has to be an element of play in creativity. That means, also, no fear of failure. Just do it, maybe it wont work, but that's no reason not to try.



And so, I move onto the next part of the quilt, and I intend to have fun!

Work In Progress

Well, it makes me anxious to post pictures of works in progress. I'm worried about criticism, about someone stealing my design. Pretty silly, isn't she?

This is actually a sketch that came out of a sketch that didn't work. Often, I make a sketch and go with it without pausing to think. But this is a second attempt, which means I might still need to refine it before it gets made. But for now, I'm totally happy with it.




This design feeds out of the last series I was working on, which I finished yesterday but haven't post a pic of yet. You've seen some of it, tho. But I will get a good pic to post tomorrow.





And here is the design partially filled in. Raspberry lemonade, anyone?

My Mornings

Well, after being diagnosed with kidney stones, I was further diagnosed with a staph infection in my urinary tract, so I have been mostly just convalescing for days and days now. Not much interesting to report about that, but I'm off my antibiotics and have been released to take caffeine again, so it would seem that whole episode is behind me. Funny thing about drinking so much water everyday: your body gets really used to it and you feel thirsty if you don't drink. My doctor didn't leave me with a prescription for how much water I should be drinking now, but 1 and a half to 2 liters a day feels about right, with at least 300 ml of that being tea! Woo hoo!

So, I thought I would talk about what I do every morning. I get up as soon as my husband gets in the shower, to iron his shirt. I actually lay in bed until I hear the water hitting his body before I get up - dragging it out, see? I know, I could iron his shirts the night before or during the day after he's gone to work, but I like having to get up that early because then I can see my daughter before she leaves for school, too.

After I iron the shirt, I sit down at the computer with my breakfast. Lately it's been blueberry yogurt. I have all my blogs open in tabs so I can just click one after the other, and that takes some time to load, so that's when I go to the kitchen and get breakfast. I take my yogurt to the computer, and usually all my sites are loaded. Here they are, in the order I look at them:


Fibermania: My sister's blog. We often communicate about what she or I have blogged for the day, altho I haven't left too many comments there lately.
Exuberant Color: This is a blog I just recently started visiting regularly, and I got to her from my sister's blog. They are friends, and I enjoy reading about what she's making and about the weather in northern Illinois.
Craftzine: This is one I find inspiration at regularly. Always has several posts for each day, usually something catches my interest.
Softies Central: This blog is a little less consistent since the author moved to Los Angeles and seems to hate her job there (poor thing) but when she's on, it's really good. I like soft sculpture.
The Needle: This is a site for softie makers to post their creations, and there's always something cute/interesting/disturbing to look at here.
Create!: This is the blog of a woman named Alicia Kachmar. I first found her site after a google search for amigurumi. Alicia is a crocheter, but her site is about all sorts of things.
From One Chick to Another: I came to this site after doing a search for silver seabright chickens. This is the type of chicken I want to own in some far away someday I dream about sometimes. This blog is created by a Christian woman in Canada, and she has chickens, ducks, goats, horses, pigs, and she takes great pictures. Funny how you can get hooked on reading the blog of a perfect stranger.
CraftyStylish: This is another collection of creative-types posting articles about various things, some of which I'm interested in. Jeffrey Rudell is a regular contributor that I really enjoy - he does amazing art with paper.
The Toy Society: This is a woman in Australia who started this site as a way to keep track of soft toys she's made and abandoned in various places in Australia, with a note saying Take Me Home I'm Yours and instructions for toy recipients to contact her to let her know they've found the toy. Almost as soon as she started the site, tons of people contacted her to ask if they could participate in their own towns, and she agreed. I was one of those people, and I have a toy all ready to be abandoned, but I've been sick and it's been really rainy in Singapore. Hopefully soon I will have something to post about this.
After these sites, I have two blogs done by friends, and I'm not sure they would want me to post a link here, so I wont.
Lastly, it's: Flickr SingPacer: My husband's flickr account. Since he often works on and posts his pictures while he's at work, I'm not always aware that there's something new to look at, so I just check it regularly.

Oh, I almost forgot. I also regularly visit Pixdaus, which is a site like Flickr, except it seems to be managed over on this side of the world as many of the photographs are from Asia and Eastern Europe.
And lately my obsession has been with this Free Rice site. Warning, highly addictive! It's a site created by a dad of a 15 year old boy who didn't want to study for his SATs. Apparently, the dad was a computer programmer or something like that, and he worked with charitable organizations. So he created this site to help high school students study for their SATs (I never took one, you know) and it has all these different categories. For every correct answer, they donate 20 grains of rice to someone who needs it. For every incorrect answer, they give you the correct answer and then they give you the question again, a little later, so you have the chance to learn it.
My favorite categories are English vocabulary, English grammar, Art, World Capitals (I suck at this, but I'm getting better), French, German and Spanish. I never go near the math or science stuff, but then I don't have to. Great site for those of you with high school students! Or not, like me.


Taking a look at all of this blogs/sites can take very little time, or it can tie me up for an hour. Especially Free Rice. But now that I'm feeling better, I plan on visiting one more site on a regular basis: the blogger create page. In other words, I plan to blog more frequently.

I'm back!

Getting Something Accomplished

After languishing around the house for the last week, I finally felt well enough yesterday to make something. What a wonderful feeling it is to be healthy. And, it also happened to be my husband's birthday, so I had a project in mind.



I had seen a project like this online, using freezer paper as a template to paint a shirt. Basically, you trace your design on the paper side of the freezer paper, cut it out using an xacto blade or small scissors, and iron on the shirt where you want it. Then you iron on another sheet of freezer paper on the inside so the paint wont leak through. Then you paint it.

Unfortunately for me, I had to put the paint on 3 different times. Or rather, I had to try 3 different paints. The first one I tried was Setacolor Jaquard fabric paint. But this is transparent. Wont show up on a dark green shirt. Then I tried this Pentel fabric paint. It seemed to work, but when it was dry, it was barely visible. So I resorted to good old acrylic paint. Of course this worked. Duh.

'THIS SHIRT GOES OVER MY HEAD' get it? It's a double entendre. If you don't get it, then it's perfect.

Anyway, while I was waiting for the paint to dry, three different times, I decided to make a small quilt for this frame I bought 2 weeks ago at Muji.

Mini Mansions

5" x 14"

detail

This frame is plexi with stainless attachments and sits on a desk or bookshelf.  I like the way it looks a lot and will probably be making more mini quilts to frame this way.

Not A Sketch

My daughter was doing some watercolor paintings yesterday while I worked on the quilt. For her last painting, she used a straw and blew blobs of paint around on the paper. It got me thinking about doing that with ink, a project I did in high school. One inspiration led to another, and I wound up with this:



I stopped coloring on it because I didn't want to anymore, not because I felt like it was finished. But it was fun. I was doing the coloring after the ink had dried, after dinner, actually, and my husband and daughter kept seeing things in the blobs and in the spaces between the blobs.



And we are now into the yellows. Almost done, actually. I'm liking it!

Trip to Ikea

Monday was Go To Ikea Day. Since this takes over an hour on the bus, we don't make the trip frivolously. Nor spontaneously. My main objective was a new laundry drying rack, as you will see, but I also got a trash can for my living room, a tree for my daughter to hang her necklaces on, some trivets which will be covered in fabric and mounted to the wall in my daughter's room so she can use pushpins to put up stuff, and some light bulbs. We also met with Dad to have lunch together.



This is my old drying rack. It's sufficient, but it wont fit on my little balcony. So, we have to look at drying clothes in my dining room, which can be uncomfortable for my daughter's 14 year old friend-who-is-a-boy. Also, it's a little cramped in there!



Here is the new one. Taadaa! It is about 2 feet square and 5 feet tall, and is adjustable as far as the shelves go. It holds tons of laundry, and best of all - it can sit outside and be out of the way.


Here are the before and after shots of the cork trivets turned into a decorative item for a teenage girl's room.









This is the tree I mentioned for displaying necklaces. It's not necessarily sold for that purpose, but what do we care? It works.



We had to hire a 7-seater taxi to get us home since the drying rack was so big. But it only cost us half of what having Ikea deliver it would have cost, plus we didn't have to wait.

Isn't Ikea the best?

Inconsistent Blogging

Well, further to my goal of making a sketch everyday, it was suggested that I could post my sketch everyday.

Don't count on it.

But I decided to give this one a try. It's so blue! That's because my windows in my studio are tinted blue.

I'm not really trying to accomplish any big thing with these sketches. I just suspect that if I keep drawing, it will open up new windows of inspiration and creativity for me. Plus, I like to draw. Especially when I know no one has to see it but me. So, that's why I'm making no promises about posting the drawings. This one isn't any masterpiece, and I felt ok about posting it, so we'll see....

After the Move

Of course, we're still unpacking and finding homes for things.  We had to put everything on hold for about a week as we all got sick.  I'm finally feeling better, symptom-free but I tire easily.  Unfortunately, both my daughter and husband aren't feeling well, again!  He's stayed home from work today, and the doctor prescribed antibiotics.  She's just too sick to feel well, but not sick enough to warrant staying home from school or a trip to the doctor.  Yet.  When will it end?

I spend the majority of my day today unpacking and arranging my studio.

Yea!

But, it's not done yet...

On another note, I was totally blessed and thrilled to pieces to be able to meet Timothy Bottslast weekend.

I have been a big fan of his work for nearly 20 years now and when I found out he was going to be in Singapore, I jumped at the chance to meet him. Such a nice, generous guy. And I got the chance to take a workshop with him while he was here, too. It was a dream come true. 
Here is what I made in the workshop.