merry merry

All best wishes this mid winter season and for 2012!

 
☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

Mixed Media Collage

 

There is a lot to write about recently.  We live, as the Chinese would say, in interesting times.  I started a new journal and glued, sewed, embroidered and hand dyed all pieces together.  I am a Pisces, hence the big lacey black fish.  The photo is one of me age about five.  

☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

BOO!

This is a photo from the Hubble Telescope site.  There is a new program from Google, called Picnik
where in no time you can upload a picture and do all sorts of fun things with it.

So Happy Pumpkin Day, and starting with this picture of the Sombrero Galaxy:

 

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2003028a/

I made the following variations:

Alisa Burke's Sew Wild!

Yesterday I received my order from Amazon which included "Sew Wild", a wonderful book about creating projects with mixed media, by Alisa Burke:

http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2011/06/sew-wild-promo.html

I had heard and read a lot about this book lately and nothing but very positive and complimentary comments.  The book is very inexpensive: less than $18 at Amazon, it even includes a DVD with "how to"  demonstrations, and after reading the first twenty pages I had learned  more about colors, the color wheel, color combinations and working with them,  than I ever knew before.

There are fantastic ideas for all sorts of fabric and mixed media arts in this book and every process has step by step instructions and lists of materials needed, which usually are very minimal.

Alisa Burke's Recycled Paper Clutch, Series 400

I love to work with fabric scraps, paints of all kind and free hand machine sewing, making collages.  If you do too, you must get this book full of very valuable information, ideas, and tips about rather simple processes which produce wonderful results.  Buy one for your friends too!

 

http://www.alisaburke.com/about.html

ALISA BURKE, my new heroine!

☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

Been Gone

I have not been active here for a bit, because I am rearranging my craft room, and also have exited a number of websites that I found no longer interesting and/or downright worrysome.

Facebook, of which I never was a big fan, but which I joined mainly for yarn related activities, made another one of its numerous "improvements", which left me utterly confused and irritated. Because any time they "improve" something, all your privacy settings are deactivated and you have to go through it all again, very carefully, to make sure that you cannot be found by certain idiots who like to play very impractical and so not amusing "tricks" on your site.

I also tweeted myself out of the twitter thingy. I don't know about you, but after 30 followers I felt overwhelmed and by the time I had 75 I could not keep them apart or chronologically tie together all the reported little activities  they  "shared",  or the affairs they either attended or had had.  All the political crap is aggravatingly crazy making too,  so I left them to it.

I am just not that "peeps" oriented. You might even say I have no problem with being a bit  "peepsless" or "peepsless peep" myself.  That reminds me though:  loooove those easter peeps...

Then I found remnants of an old Myspace account, which to me, always felt more like "their space" - I never quite figured out the rules and it was so not speedy.  And there was an old Linked In  account, like I am ever going to work again...  So  you see?   All this connectivity and no real connections.

Anyway,  this required the removal of lots of info and photos, which wasted a lot of  time at both ends.  Apart from that, for more than two months now,  construction is going on in my neighborhood, which basically forces us to sleep during the day and be awake at night when it is quiet,  and we can hear ourselves think.  But all this ended up making us very crabby and cranky.

I did manage to create a few things, however.  Actually wrote a prescription for myself:

Rx: Make Art QD

And there you have it.    I'll soon add some new pictures.  It is supposed to rain later today and the rest of the week - so perhaps that will stop the banging in the neighborhood for a while.  Would be nice.  Right now, it is almost 10:30 AM, time to go to bed and sleep until "quittin' time" for the construction workers.

And how was your summer?

 
☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

crafts

crafts, a set on Flickr.

Hanging

Ever felt like nothing quite went right and everything had its own schedule, completely different from yours,  and just left you hanging?

Phone calls unanswered;  internet mucking up; computers failing; sewing machines grinding to a screeching halt;  construction next door robbing you of your sleep; dental office visits.....   all adding up to a general sense of loss of control resulting in  panic and crazyness?

Well, we had one of those weeks and I decided to hide in my little atelier and just create.  I did not have much to work with because of the general sense of disorganization, and just collected odds and ends, even from the rubbish basket by the sewing desk and stitched together something that, in fact, reflects my whirlwind mind of that time.  Made me feel better though.

I started out with bunches of loose threads placed on a piece of mattress cover, which formed the basis of the little wall hanging, and then stitched on odds and ends from my bead collection and strips of yarn and fabric, branches covered in scraps of material or thread and hung it from a few dried branches from the yard.  Et voila!  A little wall hanging, and peace has returned in the house as well as in my mind.

We now have two new computers, and WiFi:  yeah, that is an improvement!!  Why did we wait this long?... and it is even cheaper than the old and slow DSL.   Thanks Time Warner!  Still waiting for the sewing machines to return home.  The White just needs a tune up; the ancient (1954 Kenmore) one, needs repair, but is so worth it, according to Tony the repair person.  It is a collector's item.  Who knew?  It belonged to my mother-in-law, bless her heart.

Take away pizza to be delivered in a bit:  heaven!

☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

For when the big one hits...

This is one of the little bags I made recently, which now is finished.  It has a special purpose.  When my husband and I are out, we carry it with us, and at home it hangs on the wall, over a note that says: Medical Information. 

See the two little notebooks?  There is one for each of us and contains the following:

A photo for identification
Our medical insurance card
Our Medicare card
Dental Insurance card
The card from the Neptune Society  (prepaid arrangement for the final barbecue)
The names and phone numbers of all our doctors
    (you can use their business cards - get one next time you visit them)
Names and phone numbers of the pharmacies we use
Our diagnoses
A list of our medications (I always print up a bunch, because every time you visit a doctor
    you are asked what you are taking, so I whip out my little list for them to keep
Your phone number(s)

To this you can add any other pertinent information - for example:  my husband wants to be called "Mr." Whatever, and not by his first name.  Not, horrors,   "sweetie, honey, grandpa, or hun"  or other  terms of endearment which someone forty years younger than he  feels like calling him.  He also hates TV.

You may want to add the names and addresses of your closest relatives and friends.  Or the name of your attorney, in case you croak.

Don't include  your social security number or your address.  This information can be obtained from your insurance or doctor, if necessary.  Do not include credit cards.

You get the picture.  I believe everyone should carry something like this with him.  In case of an emergency of any kind, when all your medical information is instantly available to whomever comes to your aid, this will speed up the process of getting you the help you need as quickly as possible.

Don't leave home without it!

        ☯      

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

Mom's Pot Holders

I have moved around a lot in my 44 years of living in California.  The last time was from Northern California to Los Angeles, to my new husband's house (his was bigger than mine so we sold my house).  There was also already a lot of stuff in his house which had belonged to his parents.  In essence, we combined three households and for a while the house looked like we were aspiring hoarders.  Thirteen years later it looks a lot better, but we are still finding stuff we did not know, or had forgotten, we had.

So when I recently looked in the back of a linen closet, there were a bunch of pot holders, among which two my mother had made, ages ago.  I guess I always carried them with me from place to place, without really being aware of it.  Looking at them closer, I tried to figure out how she had made them, and I managed to copy them.  It was not too hard.  They are made as if you are making a weird pointy sided hat.  The end result is a double thick pot holder, which is joined at the bottom with a row of single crochet through both layers.

Unfortunately one of my mother's had caught a bit of a flame over the stove, so I removed the last, burnt, row and made a new one.  The orangy one is hers, the blue one mine.  These are great stash busters.  For instructions look in HOW DO I DO THAT.

☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~

Lots of Little Bags

Apart from the fact that the days of utter muggyness  are finally over, and it was fun to go out again, our weekend was particularly successful with a trip to Big Lots and finding lots of cheap yarn.  I found some lovely multicolored stuff and matching yellow and whipped up a bunch of little bags.   I wanted to try different stitches from the book:  The Complete Photo Guide to Crochet by Margaret Hubert, which I absolutely adore.  Get it from Amazon, the price has just been reduced to $16.

All the bags are done in a different pattern.

 

The multicolored bag on the left with the shoulder strap and crocheted white flower, is finished and the crochet stitch almost looks like bargello embroidery.  It is much less difficult than it looks.  I used both the yellow and multicolored yarn alternately.  The other multicolored ones are WIPs, as are the two yellow ones.  The top yellow one is in a very thick sturdy stitch.  I love its texture and have to think of making something special of it, with embellishments.  Stay tuned!

☯

~ Tranquility and Tolerance ~