Fooling around with watercolors

there is a lot of doodling one must do 

with watercolor paints to get them to work right

There is also a lot of brushwork 

and water distribution

It's that last part that has been giving me the most trouble

to little and the paint skitters over the paper

 leaving skid marks and empty spots

To much and it leaves puddles of color in odd places

that pool and dry with hard edges

to much water will also thin out the pigment 

to almost invisibility 

in an already transparent medium

Then there is the paper itself to worry about

mixed media paper is good to practice brush strokes

and color mixology, which is completely different than color theory 

and your initial water retention on

 

but not good enough for actual pictures

because the paper will suck the water right out of your brush  till it gets pilly and weird

and any attempt at finesse will go right out the window

the leaning curve between too much water and not enough is

proving difficult 

But rewarding

and it tickles my colorbone

I will leave you with a cat 

or two

Kitchen katastrophy a saga in several parts

 So around july 1st-ish My 30 year old gas stove top decided it was time to unalive itself. 

 After a couple months lighting it with matches, because it's first symptom, was the automatic spark stopped working. Needless to say, we needed a new one for a while. We were just avoiding the inevitable.

Yes, it had symptoms, multiple. Over several months.

We thought, as you do, If this is the worst that happens we can live with it....

It wasn't 

Every once in a while you would get a whiff of gas and go make sure all the burners were off and the furnace and water heater were ok, 'cause they're gas too. It would go away and everything would be fine for a while.

Until it wasn't 

We were smelling more gas, more often and then the gas bill came. It was twice as high as it usually was. sooooo, this needed better investigating shoes. 

So I did what you do, I took everything apart washed it all good, because it may be last time I did this, I didn't connect something right, put it back together again, making sure everything was connected right, turned it on and it worked just fine, for a few days, starter and all........OK, then....

A few days later, the starters stopped and a few days after that, we smelled the wafting, again. *sigh*

So that wasn't it.

We took it apart more, switching the burners around and, again a few days of works just fine, followed by the same deterioration. Ungh!

FINE! 

During this time I had not been idyll, I had been researching new stoves , wow are they expensive! And on what planet, do they need to be connected to the internet?

One more attempt to take it apart fiddle with the electrical connectors. This is in the DDH's wheelhouse, My electrical expertise is limited to rewiring lamps and dusting the insides of the sewing machines,  so I sat and watched. This where we discovered there was a limit to the amount of apart we could take the stove. the top and bottom are riveted closed, how annoying!

Anyhow, we put it all back together again, AGAIN, aaaannd you guessed it, same glide path of worksjustfine followed by badness. Well Poo! 

With one BIG exception, One fine morning, I went to boil water for coffee and flames started shooting out of, not just the burner, but the knobs too. EEP! O.O!!

Quick as a bunny, I turned the gas off at the main connector under the stove........... HONEY!!!!

After testing this experience for himself, we finally decided it was dead. I had decided this at chapter FINE! but, well, you know. Anyway, a complete disconnecting and dismantle later we discovered the body of the stove, you know that riveted closed part we couldn't get to?, was full of water !!!!! (insert Flora looses her shit here) WTAF!. Which then proceeded to bleed all over the kitchen floor, Lovely.  -.-

*Grumble Grumble* 

One has now to assume the trouble with the stove started here, with the rusted out bits in the part of the stove that was inaccessible, and nOt where we were trying to fix it. 

*Fuss fuss fuss*

So we have this hole in the counter,where the stove is, now, not. and are waiting for it's replacement. With baited breath.

August 15th. This was the soonest we could get ANYTHING close to what we wanted,as  everything else was October.....November..... when hell freezes over..... this all happened around july 1st, so -.-

14 more days. 

I bought an electric kettle to boil water for coffee......

RSC Purple birds and geese

2 " Hst

I make my baby HST's with the left over  corners of the larger HST's from  the Birds 

as you can see there are a lot of them

I have found the easiest way to get them is 

after you sew the seam for the birds down the center of your square is to take another seam 1/4" toward one corner to get the smaller HST

All the bird hst squares end up being 2" 

from an original square of 2 1/2"

and the leftover hst's are 1 1/2" or so

sizes will vary depending on your level of OCD ;)

And here are some gees to round off what I have so far in the purples spools are to come later today maybe, I was busy the first half of this month with some friends in town visiting, doing the tourist guide thing and so forth

I will get back to stitching again 

eventually
 

A sad day in Woodinville.  Our best Quilt store is closing.

She managed to stay open in the middle of Woodenville Wine country when all around her were being pushed away in favor of more tasting rooms. She survived and thrived moving to a smaller store. 

Her heroic efforts to stay open and useful in the community, during covid, should have gotten her a medal for community service! She organized a fearful bunch of nattering sewers, to make hundreds of thousands of masks. When no one could find them for love or money, She coordinated us and made sure we knew how to make them so they were sturdy and filtered, then donated them all to local elderly shelters, hospitals and first responders, so no one would go "Naked" in the crisis. This is how you "grass roots" the heck out of a horrible situation!

Here is where I found my tribe in Washington and spent may hours learning creating, teaching and laughing with friends. When I absolutely could not "people" She understood. I could go there and still feel wanted and needed for my skills. She encouraged me to teach when I didn't think I could and encouraged me to join the local guild, where I could be useful to that community also. If it weren't for her delicate size 8's in my posterior, I would not have published 3 magazine articles or stood up before the entire guild to share my passion for Crazy Quilting or give a speech. 

 Susan has been a cornerstone of our quilting community, a bulwark in tough times and a encouraging person who is generous to a fault. Her store was our beacon, a haven of pretty fabric, new ideas and cheerful discourse. She had the best taste in color and fabric and her hand on the pulse of our community, where we were all welcome and inspired to bigger better things.

She brought us all together, when times were bleak and the rest of us didn't know what to do, but she did.

She will be missed by all of us.

RSC Bird beaks

 So anyone making these birds who wants to put beaks on 

I suggest you do it as you go because 

Hand embroidering Beaks and eyes on 5 to 10 of them at a time is much easier than  letting them pile up for half a year 

And having to do all 60 at once.

Beaks are buttonhole stitch, eyes are cast on in variegated vidani thread so there is a bit of variation to them

RSC Light and dark Blues

So the new batch of Spools and birds are in blues

Confused Geese

Many spools

2 birdies

Anyone know what a ganglian cyst is and why it attacks? I had one, which I don't recommend, took 2 weeks to calm down!

More Birdies

I dislike when my body decides to misbehave on a whim......

It's all better now but damn that was inconvenient. I am starting to embroider beaks on my birds with a blanket stitch as there are about 50 of them at this point it's going to take a while.

Irises are happy

though if it keeps raining It may take shorter than I think!

There are Beezzzzz

This one is so dark!

 

Paris bead tutorial CQ Block

So you all may remember, 

or not, 

way back at the end of the first millennium of plague, 

in february of 2021 I was asked to do a tutorial, (to review go here)  

for Lisa Plooster Bonie's Crazy quilt magazine  

I know that's a lot of links. But I like to attribute things where I can.

Any way here's what I finally did with it.

I found the perfect silk ribbon for those confetti colored flowers,  

from Mary Jo Hiney's "Flower Therapy" just to give you one more link, 

which were so much fun to make, I put them everywhere.

But it was mostly to cover up that yellow swoosh, which looked so off I put the block aside.

For a year. or more?

Ever done that before? Made a design choice, stuck with it, because it wasn't bad......just off.

Then revised it, then did it again but got so discouraged with all the holes you were putting in your fabric, it you stopped loving on a project?

Here's one of mine. (yes, there are more!)

I started this as part of my 2017 crazy quilt journal project and totally lost steam after six blocks

All that said, I encourage you to take one of those out of your stash and look at it again.

Stare at it for a few days, let it stare back.

It is probably not as bad as you thought it was, and actually, you cAn do something with it.

It may just take a while, a few stops and starts. 

What I am trying to say is, don't be afraid to take those old languishing blocks out of the closet/drawer/blackhole

you banished them to for "not rightness" go look at them again. you might be pleasantly surprised 

But eventually some designer bug wakes up at the back of your brain and woosh! It's done!

  

And it's pretty

Speaking of bugs, maybe it needs a dragonfly or two, and a few more bugs..........hmmm

RSC Sage and Forest Green part #2

Just a few left over birds

I had lots of scraps for these fellows

Funny how the more you use the more you have.

The bins are never empty, just more organized

How does that happen?

I need another Scrap catcher.

 

RSC Sage and Forest green

Making geese, just a few, 2 different sizes

 and spools, which are quick and easy when your'e busy

 

Stays!

I made a pair of stays

It's about 1/2 and 1/2, machine sewed and hand sewed

so impressive but not crazy making

There is enough out there to make me crazy I don't need help

so far they fit well though now that I have been wearing them for a few house the are a bit short wasted but I need to loose a few pounds which seems to even it out.

Whatevs

They are not symmetrical because I am not symmetrical.

I'm ok with this. 

Cool thing is they are reversible!

Wish I had more of the William Morris prints though!

I ended up combining two different prints cause I only had 1/4 yard of each so there are 4 panels of on print and 4 panels of the other

I made it work and it looks good to me!

If other's don't suffer.

We have the best medical care in the world, 

IF YOU CAN PAY FOR IT

But that is the point for these people isn't it.

I can't be seen to be winning, if you don't loose.

I can't have the best, if you can have it too.

My wealth and privilege, isn't as satisfying if other's don't suffer.

My piety, isn't as heavenly, if other's don't suffer.

My control, over those beneath my contempt isn't as pleasurable, if other's don't suffer. 

If other's don't suffer. 

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

If other's don't suffer.

Cathy's Block is now a box!

I finished this block and mounted it quite a while ago but then it sat on my table with nothing to do 

but look pretty fabulous for a long time 

until I got my excrement together to finish what I intended to do with it

Even the inside of the box was ready

I just hadn't yet decided on the fabric for the outside of the box

So needing to get SOMETHING done

I finally shifted myself and went through my fabric stash


And there you go

Easy peasy

Bob's your uncle