Knit, Purl, Whatever

This semester has been killing me, so I apologize for any prolonged absence. Lots of things have happened this month. I had my 25th birthday. I went to a Stone Temple Pilots concert. I got in a car accident that left my car with many thousands of dollars of damage and a need to sue the woman who refuses to pay...

My cousin is also getting married soon, and my sister is the maid of honor. She can't take her boys with her to the wedding, so I'll be taking care of my two nephews, 7 and 2 years, for about a week. Dane and I get to be like parents for a while. We'll see whether or not it forces one or both of us to get ourselves fixed.




So, I've taught myself to knit. I found a very lovely and informative website (complete with videos!) here that really helped a lot. I've managed to walk myself through a very cute pattern for a little doll dress. I'm not done yet, but it's fairly straightforward. And I have yet to stab myself with the knitting needles, so I suppose that counts as a huge victory for me!

I like knitting. I was afraid of it at first, but now that I've gotten the hang of it and I can see what awesome things just a few stitches can do, maybe I'll finally pay attention to that expanding knitting section at the book store. Knitting is becoming a very cathartic activity. Cross stitch and embroidery are like that too, but knitting doesn't require nearly so much thinking and stopping-and-starting. I can let my right brain take over quite easily.



I've also got my charms finished for the Think Pink Charms Exchange, another crafty project that benefits the fight against breast cancer. My charms are wrapped up in a Priority box sitting right next to my elbow. Dane forgot to drop it off at the post office yesterday...

Expect another post in the next ten minutes. I'm separating them because the next bit I want to post about is a self-containing topic.

Somewhere between red, green, and bananas

Need to clean today. We're getting a king sized bed to replace our queen because Dane likes to sleep either in the middle of the bed, or horizontally, and the cats take up whatever room is left.

The piece I'm working on, the Diet Quilt for lack of a better term, is waiting for me to add a soft quilter's flannel backing to it to give it some substance before I start any hand-quilting or surface embellishment. Once I removed the paper from the backs of the squares, I realized just how thin some of the fabrics were. I'm going to incorporate some of the soft wool sweater pieces, and I'll see what interesting little tidbits I can find in the box of scraps that dear Mary has sent me.

I'm also drinking a lot of tea, first because it's on my diet, and second because I'm saving the used tea bags and drying them out. There's a lovely project that teaches how to use the teabag paper in the latest Quilting Arts magazine (which also has an article in it by the lovely Denise Aumick, whose blog, Wild Thread Studio Art Quilts, is listed to the side.)

It seems whenever I have free time to work on a project, I feel almost paralyzed and can't actually start. And then when I'm trying to sleep or I'm in the middle of something else, ideas hit me hard and I long to run to the spare room and either get started right away, or find my journal and sketch out the idea. Invariably, I always seem to be away from my journal at these times, so perhaps I should strap that thing to my head. It can be a very stylish hat.

I did get Teesha Moore's Journal Book Set (found here) and it has such lovely full-color representations of some of her very beautiful journal pages. I expect to get lots of inspiration from them, and possibly come up with some techniques as well to achieve similar ends. I feel that one very effective way to learn is to study, emulate, and create a version of beautiful work to get a handle on techniques and styles. By no means am I condoning stealing another person's work or infringing on any type of idea-ganking. However, I do feel that you need someone to be a role model before you can be one yourself.

Here is Lando being silly.


Untitled from Cindibee on Vimeo.

To the trenches

My cold is still with me. I'm waging a bitter war against the bacterial invaders that dare to steal time away from my precious three week vacation before the dreaded summer semester. For now, I feel as if the adversary and I are at a standstill. We shall see who falls first before the weapons of the enemy in this trench-like warfare. Germany will soon surrender if I have anything to say about it...

Tanya found a poor little kitty near a dumpster at her work. It was raining and he was brought into her store by a crack addict. (Downtown Bryan yields many treasures.) I brought him home, cleaned off the fleas that were feasting on him, and then Tanya and I presented him to her brother Les, who instantly fell in love and named him Lando. He is now residing in my bathroom, since the poor guy is still only 4 weeks old and needs to get some weight on him. But he already knows who his daddy is, and loves to cuddle on Les's shoulder whenever he sees him.



As for my newest project, I've started making... well, something. I'm hand-stitching some squares of fabric together using the English paper piecing method. Once I get something of the approximate size I want, I'll probably fiddle around with different scraps and stitching and make a sort-of arty quilty wall piece. I started this with the intention of giving myself something to do while I'm on my diet. Busy hands don't creep towards the chocolate.

But as I have been sick these last few days, I've held off on the diet and am getting some real meals, at least for the time being. I've been told that if I stay on the shakes while sick, I could go into heart failure, and a sick heart at 24 doesn't sound too appealing.

In any case, I've been diligently working on my stitching and plan to add some nice embellishments, like perhaps some of the wool scraps I just bought from a lovely seller called little borrowers on Etsy.



This weekend is my brother-in-law's 16th birthday, as well as Mother's Day, so we'll be down in New Braunfels. That's just fine with me. They have some lovely antique shops, and I will so be browsing them and finding many new and fascinating ways to spend my husband's money.

Do beginnings and middles lead to eventual ends?

I started working on my first official art quilt today. This is the one where I sat down with a sketchbook and decided it was going to be completely original, with no input from outside sources. It started from a doodle I did during class, and evolved into a sketch, then a collection of colors, then a bunch of shapes.



I feel rather proud with how it's coming along. I have some great ideas for how I'm going to quilt the lines on the tree and the leaves, and how I'm going to stitch the feathers. This art piece is intended to be a gift.

In addition to this, I started a fabric art book class at Doll Street Dreamers. I'm really excited about this, because I love adding to my arsenal of creative techniques. The first lesson already has some great stuff in it.

Starting something new (again...)

A week since I've said anything? I would be surprised, but really, I know I've been busy. I love sharing what I'm working on, but sometimes what I'm working on is homework and that's never fun.



So, I took a break from the Bug Bottle Quilt and started working on another project. (I know I do this a lot. It is an unbreakable habit.) I found a cute pattern in American Patchwork and Quilting (my favorite quilting magazine) for a table runner. The pattern is designed for Moda Jelly Rolls, which are rolls of coordinating 2 1/2" strips.



I picked out a cute Jelly Roll from my favorite quilt store and set to work, setting up at the kitchen table. (I have visions of being able to have my own separate table where I can set up my huge cutting mat and leave it there. I will have my very own room and there will be a sign on the door that says "Husbands stay out. Kitties allowed in on good behavior.")

I hope to get this runner done this weekend. It's a fairly simple construction, using diamonds and strips, and I didn't have to complete the hardest part, which is cutting all of those strips. I don't know how far I'll get though, seeing as I need to study as well and I have a few assignments due at the beginning of next week.

I've started organizing the fabric from my grandmother, though there's still a huge box of it sitting in the middle of the room. I also got a wonderful present in the mail today from Judi: a set of cute little rubber stamps! One of them is an owl! They're the type you mount on an acrylic block, so I get an excuse to go shopping to pick one up. Thank you Judi, for giving me a reason to shop! That's always the best gift of all. ^.^

Now, kitties sleeping in a row!