Flower and Fabric

Every few days I go blog hopping, soaking in the gorgeous hand dyed, stamped, painted, textured, eye candy fabrics. I dream and plan about when I'll have time to spread out yards of plain fabric and go to it! In the meantime I occasionally find a gorgeous commercial fabric I just have to buy. I add it to my boxes and piles of fabrics and every so often pull them out, admire and caress them as I think of all the things I could create. Then I fold them up and put them away. Last week I pulled out this beauty and took a quick break to cut a scarf length of fabric. This is sheer and ravels so I enclosed the edges with a French seam and I had an easy quick scarf that I wore with a white shirt and black jeans. It satisfied my fiber addiction for the week!

Like many of you I'm out in the garden this time of year. Actually down here I'm out more in the winter but with a new wild flower garden this year I'm been out more than usual. Here are a few of the wild beauties.

I've wanted to use one of my petal vases for our own cut flowers for a long time!

Do You Wax Your Bottoms?

I learned years ago to wax the bottoms of my pots before glazing. The wax resists the glaze, making it quick and easy to wipe away any bits of glaze before firing. Of  course if you've trimmed or added a foot you only need to wax the foot; as long as no glaze touches the kiln shelf. Occasionally I've met potters who prefer to skip the whole step of waxing pots and just opt to wipe away the glaze from the bottoms of the pots. Well recently I have decided to try that route. I've found that my hand sometimes gets a bit shaky when brushing on the wax leaving an uneven edge. I've never considered that a problem but decided to see if no waxing might give me nicer bottom edges. So far I've been happy with this technique. 

Do you wax?

A Different Kind of Yarn Bowl

As I loaded the kiln today I came across two bowls, fired and glazed but waiting for their fiber additions. Rather than continue with my catch-up day I headed into the sewing room with my fired bowls. I dug through my box of yarns, found my crochet hooks and chose the largest hook that would fit through the holes in my bowl.

I wanted to crochet an entire lining for my bowl but was tempted to stop after a couple rows around the top as I really like that look too. I'm glad I pushed forward as I've been wanting to try this full crocheted lining for some time now and I'm glad I went for it! 

 Here's a shot of my yarn bowl in use to create my other kind of yarn bowl!

 And finally the empty nest ......