A First in the Garden!

 These little flowers appeared a couple weeks ago. This is my first year to try growing peas and carrots.

 Then this appeared on the pea vines! And this week I picked enough peas for lots of raw munching plus more to have with dinner. They are soooo sweet and tasty! Plus I picked my very first carrot from the garden .... there it is next to a few of the peas.

 In the clay studio I've been working on a special order so while it is in waiting stages I was inspired by one of my own pieces I had recently hung on the wall ....

 I decided to roll out some slabs and make a triptych, and it won't even have stitching or fiber! Now why did I do that?!

Hope you're having a great week!

Fire and Fiber, Finally!

I finally did a glaze firing last week and unloaded the kiln over the weekend. I took a long break from both the clay studio and sewing but am back! I unloaded a mix of strictly functional and a few pieces that will have fiber and fabric additions. Those are always fun!

Above are two vessels already finished. I love the funky fuzzy one and plan to make more for my studio, holding pens, brushes, etc. Below are several awaiting their turn in the fabric room.

And as always a few mugs always find their way into the fire ....

And I had several embellishments in this load including this bowl of mini beads. 

I'm slowing adding a few of these to my Etsy shop. 

Oh ..... excitement in my sewing room .... when I came home from tennis yesterday my new cover stitch machine awaited me! I know I'm supposed to be in the clay all this week BUT  .... who can resist playing with a new machine?! My intent is use this mostly in my clothing sewing but I'll be experimenting with in some quilts too.

Hope you're having a fun week!

South Florida Hawk

While I was watering the garden late this afternoon, I heard a very vocal bird. I thought perhaps it was actually a tiny bird with a big voice but as I looked up just before coming inside I saw this beautiful bird! I thought my noticing him/her would quiet his/her voice and/or chase it away but I had time to go inside, get my camera, come back and shoot several photos. I never did see it leave so I guess it feels very secure up there in the trees.

Anyone know what type of bird it is? I can only guess as far as hawk of some type. It looks so soft and cuddly .... aren't looks so deceiving?!  Update: My neighbor just told me it's an osprey. I should know that, shouldn't I?

Stamps and Stamping

     Yesterday our little Odd Tuesday group got together here for a fun day of making stamps. We tried wrapping cord and elastics on cylinders, scratching/cutting into styrofoam trays, carving erasers, cutting and gluing foam onto cylinders or flat surfaces, glue gunning onto wood slabs, etc. For cylinders we had paper towel rolls, tp rolls and shampoo bottles. Eliza had a good idea to keep the cardboard tubes sturdy plus add handles, that being to stuff with rolled up newspaper, worked great.
     Above is a little sample piece I made after our get together from some test fabric of some of the stamps we'd created.

thank you to Jackie for the following photos .... she thought to bring her nice new camera!

 Aren't Jackie's carved stamps cool?!

 Testing above.... ok, they're keepers ....

One of Belinda's foam and styrofoam stamps .... beware of what glue you use, I understand some wash away when you wash your stamp!

Another Christmas!

Actually it was a blogiversary, Karen celebrated her second blogiversary a few weeks ago and I was the lucky winner of her giveaway and wow, what an incredible package she put together! I came home from school last week exhausted, and found this package from Karen and Weasley at the door. Karen made this super bag with a screen printed zentangle bunny. Read about the bag and how it folds up really cool and also her reason for celebrating. She received her blog from her two daughters two Christmases ago ... I love the story!

I immediately had a cup of the wonderful cranberry black tea with the best chocolate (and organic too) I've had! I've started out the New Year with some doodling so I'm looking forward to taking it up a notch with the hints I'll find in the Zentangle book and then a sketchbook, pens and cool water soluble ink pencils - those will be fun to experiment with! And that's a darling card on the left from Karen and Weasley .... THANK YOU Karen and Weasley! Check out their blog at Rabbits Eat Quilts!

Reveal Time: Vzhlédnout

It's reveal day over at Tangled Textiles. Our topic was 'Look Up'. I've written about this piece over at Tangled Textiles where you'll also find lots of fun and creative interpretations from the other members!

Cleo kept me company, waiting patiently as I did the finishing touches this weekend.

2011 Meet 2012

I did some fabric dyeing last week so decided to use one of the pieces for this year's calendar journal. I used the same format as last year but included a couple extra business card sized pockets and it closes with yarn rather than elastic. I found I often simply folded the outer wrap section inside as a marker and only tie it closed when I'm taking it somewhere. It usually sits on the kitchen table where I check it each night and morning.

 

I free motion quilted the outer piece to 'fast2fuse interfacing' and prepared the inner piece with it's pockets before stitching the three together.

To stitch in the signatures, I used the crochet cotton thread that I had tied some of my fabrics with when dyeing.

I forego the clay button this time and simply used some matching fabric stiffened just like the journal. And once again ran some papers through the printer without dates as it is much quicker for me to add those in by hand than figure out how to get them right in the computer settings!

...dummy me ..... copied out the dates all the way to July before I realized I was using a 2011 calendar to copy the dates from (I hadn't noticed the calendar was a two year calendar, I simply saw the 2012)! So I  cut some labels and covered the wrong dates and am redoing the dates correctly now. Maybe I should figure out how to print the calendar next year!
      Hope your 2012 calendar is looking just as you had hoped!